The purpose of education is to give the individual mastery over himself, a creative relationship with society and understanding of his place in the universe. Education deals with the whole man: his mind, his emotions and his will. Distinctions now existing between the education of culture, the education of science and technic, the education of citizenship and the education of faith produce incomplete and unbalanced personalities. Miseducated individuals experience every major social crisis in terms of different aspects each justifying a partisan approach.
Education is continuous with life. Ignorance about matters confronting adults is more harmful though less perceptible than ignorance on the part of the child. The human right to education is the right to enter into the larger evolutionary processes of civilization. Systems producing rigidly molded attitudes and emotional fixations can no longer claim to be educational.
- The human right signified by freedom of worship or liberty of conscience remains only a legal sanction accorded to diverse religious communities to practice and promulgate their special systems of belief until the individual is granted sufficient spiritual knowledge to arrive at his own adult and independent decision concerning the nature of faith.
(BIC, 1947 Feb, A Baha'i Declaration of Human Obligations and Rights)
With regard to education
All the children must be educated so that there will not remain one single individual without an education. In cases of inability on the part of the parents through sickness, death, etc., the state must educate the child. In addition to this widespread education, each child must be taught a profession or trade so that each individual member of the body politic will be enabled to earn his own living and at the same time serve the community. Work done in the spirit of service is worship. From this universal system of education misunderstandings will be expelled from amongst the children of men.
(Compilations, Baha'i Scriptures, p. 278)