Education Is an End In Itself

by Fritz Hinrichs

“When we climb out of the broad stream that comprises the wisdom of the ages, it is very easy to lose our educational bearings, being blown to and fro be the winds of opinion. To be motivated to work, we need to instill in our children first godly character and then the conviction that their studies are indeed significant. Despite the mantras that are continually chanted around us, the motivation for pursuing an education does not come from looking at charts of the average salary levels of various degree recipients, or from following the educational atomism that reduces all educational accomplishment to a single GPA, or by explaining all labors as just steps in the great “ordu salutis” culminating in acceptance by that Ivy-league dream college. By putting before students these poor reasons for getting an education we are drumming into them the idea that education is a means and not an end. Until they understand that education is an end in itself, that indeed, the creation in which we dwell and the historical saga in which we take part are truly worthy of our interest and concentrated study, we will only see them labor with a slave’s reluctance.”


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