A Radical Reformer Speaks Out on Education

by MLC Professor Emeritus Arnold Koelpin WLS ’58

Martin Luther, a reformer in education? Absolutely. The Reformation was essentially an educational movement. The Reformer’s effort in reviving formal education is basic to his call for reform. In a sermon on keeping children in school, he bases his appeal chiefly on teaching children God’s Word. “If the Scriptures and learning disappear,” he asks with pointed rhetoric, “what will remain in the German lands but a disorderly and wild crowd indeed?”

The key to renewing education lay in the schoolteacher’s office. In God’s sacred order, the office originates in the family. “Every parent is an overseer in his own house,” Luther affirms, and so “it is the duty of father and mother to teach children and lead them to God.” The school is merely the extension of the home. A teacher takes the parents’ place in training the child. “Out of the authority of parents all other authority is derived and developed,” he affirms, with an obvious application: “Where a father is unable by himself to bring up his child, he calls upon a schoolmaster to teach.” Thus the teacher has a vital role in serving the public. In praise of teachers, Luther frankly admits, “If I could leave the preaching office and my other duties, there is no other office I would rather have than that of schoolmaster or teacher; for I know that next to that of preaching, this is the best, greatest, and most useful office there is.”

So important is the parents’ position that the breakdown of the home results in tragic consequences for children, for the parents, and for the nation generally. In the long run, degeneration sets in. What children learn at home, they carry throughout life. “Where father and mother rule their families poorly,” he observes, “permitting their children to have their own way, there no city, market, village, land, principality, kingdom, or empire is ruled well. For a son becomes a father, judge, mayor, prince, king, emperor, school teacher, etc.” Echoing St. Paul, he states with a parent’s heart, “God gave you children so you would bring them up to the best of their ability” (Ephesians 6:1-4). When parents neglect their parental duties, their failure does not only come down on the children, but also on the parents themselves. In a wedding sermon, Luther instructed the couple: “Parents can perform no more damaging bit of work than to neglect their offspring, to let them curse, swear, learn indecent words and songs, and permit them to live as they please. . . . They are constantly concerned to provide sufficiently for the body rather than for the soul. . . . Therefore, it is highly necessary that every married person regard the soul of their child with greater care
and concern than the flesh which has come from them, that they consider the child nothing less than a precious, eternal treasure, entrusted to their protection by God, so that the devil, the world, and the flesh do not steal and destroy it. For the child will be required from the parents on Judgment Day in a very strict reckoning.”

To open a new path, Luther issued his education manifesto in a Letter to the Councilmen of All Cities in Germany: “Establish and Maintain Christian Schools” (1524). “We learn,” says the author, “that throughout all Germany the schools are declining, the universities becoming weak. . . . It is an earnest and great matter, deeply concerning Christ and the entire world, that we should help and counsel the young people.”

The summary goal of education, in Luther’s words, is simply “love,” even as Christ says love is the fulfilling of the law. A liberal education in itself will not free us, because it does not bring us the basic fear and love of God. “True it is,” Luther observes, “that human wisdom and the liberal arts are noble gifts of God. . . . But we never can learn from them in detail what sin and righteousness are in the sight of God, how we can get rid of our sins, become godly and just before God, and come to life from death.” For this reason “the foremost and most general subject of study . . . should be the Holy Scriptures.”

Implicit in learning the fear and love of God is the value of service to one’s neighbor, for “where the heart is right with God and this [the first] commandment is kept, fulfillment of all the others will follow of its own accord.” On this account, Luther gives advice to parents: “See to it that you above all have your children instructed in spiritual things, that you first give them to God, then to secular pursuits.”

Hand in hand with the foregoing educational aims is student development, growth of character and conscience. Luther knew youth’s penchant to ignore law and to disobey those in authority. Training is needed so that “by studying, reading, meditating, and praying, to be able in temptation to teach and comfort your own conscience as well as the conscience of others and to lead from the law back to grace, from active justice to passive justice.”

In this connection, Luther pioneered in advocating schools for girls. In an early manifesto to the Christian nobility, he outlines the need for a radical reform: “Would to God that every town had a girl’s school as well, where the girls would be taught the matter, deeply concerning Christ and the entire world, that we should help and counsel the young people.”

The summary goal of education, in Luther’s words, is simply “love,” even as Christ says love is the fulfilling of the law. A liberal education in itself will not free us, because it does not bring us the basic fear and love of God. “True it is,” Luther observes, “that human wisdom and the liberal arts are noble gifts of God. . . . But we never can learn from them in detail what sin and righteousness are in the sight of God, how we can get rid of our sins, become godly and just before God, and come to life from death.” For this reason “the foremost and most general subject of study . . . should be the Holy Scriptures.” Implicit in learning the fear and love of God is the value of service to one’s neighbor, for “where the heart is right with God and this [the first] commandment is kept, fulfillment of all the others will follow of its own accord.” On this account, Luther gives advice to parents: “See to it that you above all have your children instructed in spiritual things, that you first give them to God, then to secular pursuits.”

Hand in hand with the foregoing educational aims is student development, growth of character and conscience. Luther knew youth’s penchant to ignore law and to disobey those in authority. Training is needed so that “by studying, reading, meditating, and praying, to be able in temptation to teach and comfort your own conscience as well as the conscience of others and to lead from the law back to grace, from active justice to passive justice.”

In this connection, Luther pioneered in advocating schools for girls. In an early manifesto to the Christian nobility, he outlines the need for a radical reform: “Would to God that every town had a girl’s school as well, where the girls would be taught the gospel.” Later he reiterated the broad-based need for universal public education for everyone, girls and boys alike, to benefit society: “Only one thing is lacking,” he stated flatly, “the earnest desire to train the young and to benefit and serve the world with able men and women.” He himself took action. He invited Else von Kanitz to open a school for girls in Wittenberg and offered her room and board in his own home.