Properly conducted, a person’s education makes him or her a better Christian

In Milton’s view, education is not what people so often reduce it to — completing a certain number of courses, writing the required number of papers, “getting a requirement out of the way,” or acquiring a degree (though perhaps not an education).  Milton the educator is less interested in how much a person knows than in the kind of person he or she is in the process of becoming.  The goal of education, in Milton’s definition, focuses on a person’s relationship to God.  Properly conducted, a person’s education makes him or her a better Christian.   . . .   We customarily limit sanctification to moral and spiritual progress; for Milton, becoming like God can mean coming to share God’s love of truth and beauty as well as his holiness.

Leland Ryken on John Milton in Worldly Saints, p. 163.