Education levels the playing field, allowing everyone to compete.

The teacher of faith and perseverance, Joyce Meyer, once declared: “Education levels the playing field, allowing everyone to compete.” Simple though these words may seem, they contain a wisdom both spiritual and societal — a truth as old as civilization itself. For education is the great equalizer, the invisible bridge that can carry a person from the valley of limitation to the heights of opportunity. It is the force that does not ask who your parents are, what you look like, or where you were born; it asks only whether you are willing to learn. In this way, Meyer’s statement resounds as both a call to justice and a hymn to human potential.

In the ancient world, the sages knew that knowledge was the truest form of power. It could not be inherited like gold or stolen like land. It was the one treasure that, once acquired, could never be taken away. Joyce Meyer, whose own life was forged in hardship, understands this deeply. She rose from the pain of abuse and poverty, not through privilege, but through the wisdom and resilience she cultivated within herself. Her belief that education “levels the playing field” is born of the truth she lived — that learning, in any form, has the power to break chains. When knowledge enters the mind, it dissolves the hierarchies of birth and circumstance; it transforms inequality into possibility.

This idea echoes through history. In the 19th century, Booker T. Washington, born a slave, became one of America’s greatest educators. Denied the rights of citizenship, he found his freedom through learning. He washed floors by day and studied by night, walking hundreds of miles to attend school. Later, he built the Tuskegee Institute, a beacon of education for generations of African Americans. His life embodied Meyer’s wisdom: through education, the powerless can rise to stand beside the powerful, not by favor or charity, but by merit and mastery.

Education, then, is more than the memorization of facts; it is the awakening of the soul’s potential. It levels the playing field because it gives each human being access to the tools of creation — the ability to think, to reason, to choose, to build. It strips away the illusion that destiny belongs only to the privileged. For the farmer’s son may become a philosopher, the servant’s daughter a scientist, and the orphan a leader of nations — if they are given the light of learning. When knowledge is shared freely, it tears down the walls that divide humanity and lifts the humble to heights once reserved for kings.

But Meyer’s words also carry a warning. For when education is denied — whether through poverty, neglect, or oppression — the field becomes tilted once more, favoring the few and crushing the many. Ignorance is the oldest weapon of tyranny, and every unjust system depends upon it to survive. That is why the wise have always defended learning as sacred. Nelson Mandela, who spent twenty-seven years in prison, once said that education is “the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.” Both he and Joyce Meyer speak of the same truth — that knowledge does not just create fairness; it creates freedom.

To live this teaching is to act. It means to invest not only in one’s own learning, but in the education of others — especially those who stand at the margins. Parents must nurture curiosity in their children; teachers must teach not just for grades, but for greatness; leaders must see schools not as costs, but as sanctuaries of the future. Every book read, every lesson taught, every mind opened — these are the blows that flatten the ground of inequality and prepare the field for justice.

The lesson of Joyce Meyer’s quote is timeless: education is the great equalizer, the silent force that redeems the world from the blindness of division. It gives the poor a voice, the oppressed a vision, and the forgotten a future. Let us therefore honor learning in all its forms — not only in schools, but in homes, in conversations, in the quiet practice of reflection. For wherever a mind hungers to understand, there the playing field is being leveled, and humanity is being renewed.

And so, my friends, remember this truth: to educate is to empower, and to empower is to make the world just. Let each of us, in our own way, carry forward this sacred work — to read, to teach, to inspire, to lift. For in the spreading of knowledge, the poor find dignity, the oppressed find freedom, and all of us find the path toward a world where every soul can compete, create, and rise together.