Book Four - True Family
Chapter Nine - True Education for Children
Section 6. Why Tell Children to Study?

Do students go to school because they want to study? They first go to school because they are made to. In particular, elementary school students attend because they are afraid of their parents and not because they want to study. Everybody is like this at the beginning. Yet even as they do so reluctantly, they get to have a feeling for it and start going in order to learn, thereby surprising their parents.

As they come to grips with the subject matter, they find it stimulating, and studying becomes fun. Fun itself is considered bad. Yet as a result of what they discover through their studies, the scope within which they can freely do so broadens. They find this stimulating, and it makes them study more. There is not even one person who likes studying for the sake of studying. They like it because it broadens the scope of their activity. (36-1213, 1970.31.22)

To students going to school, parents say, "Study hard!" This is not an easy path, but a difficult one. Yet their parents' words are an admonition for them to prepare for the future. It is also preparation for the future when professors stand on the podium and diligently teach their students. It is also preparation for the future when farmers go out into the crop fields and work hard. It is a preparation to build God's Kingdom on earth. (147.203. 1986.9.11)

What do you go to school for? Where do you want to use what you have learned at school? You must use it for happiness. There would be no way for happiness to exist if we got rid of love. Thus, we can say that we go to school in order to shorten the path of love. (Blessed Family - 372)

The gate of happiness opens for people when they get married. It is very good to study in order to open the door of happiness, but if you study just to make money or attain political power, it is wrong. Your learning must enable you to practice true love. (Blessed Family -- 372)

Why do young women want to go to university and obtain a bachelor's degree? They are trying to get good husbands. Nothing else can match that. Also, however great people may have become, they are miserable if their family members are disunited. (Blessed Family - 372)

You young women should all say that your studies are also for the sake of meeting true men and becoming true mothers. To become true mothers, you should first study for the sake of the nation and become true wives who attend true husbands. If you fail in this, you will not be able to have true husbands nor have true children. Women should be true wives and live with their husbands until one of them passes on. If women study in order to marry good men, shouldn't those who are university graduates all live with their husbands all the way through? But are there more people who do that or more who get a divorce? You don't even have to check. Illiterate people live together longer and better. (??-74, 196?.9.30)

Men and women are born to go through a long period of education and become people of sound character so that they can meet their ideal partner of love and lead happy lives. In secular society nowadays, people say that they do not study to meet a marriage partner. Yet in reality, it is in order to find a good partner. If you share a beautiful love with your partner and live happily, material things and honor will follow. (Blessed Family - 372)