Let's flip our conception of education on its head:

"Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit therefrom." -- Bahá'u'lláh

Pretty quote, right? No. Missing the point. There's subversion going on here -- a total switching of perspectives.

What's our current model of education? If I were to phrase it in the style of Bahá'u'lláh's writings, it might go something like this:

"Regard man as an empty bucket, capable of holding vast and precious waters. Education alone can fill it, pouring in the knowledge and wisdom that enable mankind to thrive."

Cool idea, right? One problem: we're not just empty buckets to be filled.

Has someone ever shared an axiom and suddenly you were filled with its wisdom? Maybe something clicked, sure, but I'm willing to bet the lesson only became apparent when you had a lived experience to match it. Wisdom may be latent through shared information but must be catalyzed by experience in order to be actualized. The typical formula goes: no lived experience, no wisdom.

How about being in a math class? A professor shares the formula and you just know it, right? A professor shares the formula, and boom, you’ve got it, right?

Well… not exactly.

The tradition of mathematics has problem set after problem set where you must exercise the theory, test it in your own playground. That's when you're in the mines—you're working through to find gems of understanding. Education, the learning process, is a participatory sport. It is not passive. It demands work—it demands the miner to dig away to find the gems. But here’s the key difference: in mathematics, we mine through external problems to arrive at understanding. What if the process of education wasn’t about extracting knowledge, but about uncovering something already within us?

We've carried the metaphor loosely so far—but when we look at Bahá'u'lláh's quote, it's not that man is the miner and he must go into the mine of life to find its gems. He is the mine. The process of education reveals the gems within him.

The gems are not pieces of knowledge. The gems are the confluence of man and education—the individual's relationship with what they learn. When man and education meet, the man changes. The treasures may be revealed in his action, in his character, and in his broader relationship to mankind.

Here's my invitation: the next time you are learning something, ask yourself: what treasures do I see emerging within me? How can I share these gems for the benefit of myself and others?

You may find yourself learning in a whole new way.