Claim. Faith education is more important than school education, because it forms character and heart at a depth that academic study cannot reach; even study must be done at the risk of one’s life and for the sake of the people, not for the self.
Elaboration. SMM ranks education-of-heart over schooling: “Faith education is more important than school education” (6.2. The importance of faith education, Sabo 42-12). Blessed children must be raised “to become people of character through education of heart” (ibid, 133-282, 1984.11.3). Even ordinary study must be reframed: “Why do you feel tired when you study? It is because you study for yourself. Instead, think that the survival of the thirty million people of Korea depends on the one page or one sentence that lies before you. Study with the mind-set that the addition of one word of vocabulary will save those thirty million people… Study at the risk of your life” (ibid, 35-38, 1970.9.27). Material poverty does not block heart-education: “Even if parents cannot freely give children material benefits because of their difficult circumstances, they should serve children with a loving heart that seeps from their bone marrow. Then the children will be indebted to their parents. That is why most sons of filial piety come from poor families” (ibid, 77-38, 1975.3.30). The implication: the depth of parental devotion, not the household’s affluence, determines the children’s character.