Where Can You Get the Best Education?

“What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul.”—Joseph Addison, 1711.

DID you ever go to school? Most people can answer yes—but not everyone can. As we enter the 21st century, untold millions of children are receiving no regular schooling. This has been true for a long time, so that today close to one billion adults are illiterate.

Yet, a good education is a basic need. Rather than viewing it as an unachievable luxury, many today perceive it as a right of both children and adults. But how can a good education be possible without the proper resources? What if there are insufficient books, a lack of qualified teachers, and not enough schools?

Indeed, where can people get a quality education that encourages individual participation, expands their knowledge of the world around them, and provides them with spiritual values that can transform their lives? What education emphasizes wholesome standards of morality, shows how to achieve a better quality of life, and provides a solid hope for the future? Is such an education really available to everyone?

Basis for the Best Education

As surprising as it may seem, we can confidently answer yes, that a quality education is available to all. This is because a powerful educational tool exists that can provide a basis for it. It is a time-honored “textbook” that is available, in whole or in part, in more than 2,200 languages of the world. Essentially everyone on earth has access to it in a language that he or she can understand. What book is this?

It is the Bible, a book that has been widely acclaimed as the most important book ever written. “Everyone who has a thorough knowledge of the Bible may truly be called educated,” wrote the early 20th-century scholar William Lyon Phelps. “No other learning or culture, no matter how extensive or elegant, can . . . form a proper substitute.”

The Bible is a collection of books written over a period of some 1,600 years. Of this important library of books, Phelps added: “Our ideas, our wisdom, our philosophy, our literature, our art, our ideals, come more from the Bible than from all other books put together. . . . I believe a knowledge of the Bible without a college course is more valuable than a college course without the Bible.”

Today a phenomenal, Bible-based educational work is being carried out worldwide by the Christian community of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Such education goes beyond the basics of reading and writing. It provides mental and moral development. In a positive way, it affects people’s outlook on the future, offering the basis for valid hope that what lies ahead will be far better than what lies behind.

Please learn about this education-for-life program by reading the following article.