The Ideals of Christian Schools by F. M. W.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 22, 1916

The Ideals of Christian Schools

By F. M. W.

WE are especially pleased to learn of the simplicity which characterized the closing exercises of some of our schools. Prof. O. J. Graf spoke of this in his report in last week's REVIEW. He stated that the exercises attending the closing days of Emmanuel Missionary College were in harmony with the spirit of this movement and of our denominational work. Doubtless this was true of other schools. This is as it should be.

We hope the time will come soon (and we are rapidly nearing it already), when all those who pursue courses of study in our schools will do so in order to fit themselves for a part in God's work. To furnish this preparation is the very reason why our schools have been established. Why should not the closing exercises of the school year be in harmony with this idea?

When the true object of our schools is kept uppermost in the minds of teachers and students, the class day exercises will not be occasions for dress parade, for fun and frolic, cheap wit, and mental gymnastics, as is too often the case in schools of the world. The graduating address will not be an effort at high and dazzling oratory or great intellectual profundity, such as we might expect to hear at the commencement of the ordinary high school or the great university; but it will be an address embellished with spiritual thought and pregnant with spiritual power. It will be such an address as should naturally and appropriately be delivered by an older Christian worker to young men and women who are about to go out into the great world field to work for God and for their fellows; such an address as would inspire the undergraduates to renew their consecration to God, and to strive in the closing days of their school work for a better preparation for holy service. To several such addresses it has been our pleasure to listen at different times, and they proved an inspiration to all who heard.

The schools of the world do not constitute the proper models for the schools connected with this movement. The aim of most worldly schools is to develop mentality with but little if any concern for the spiritual welfare of their students. They appeal to selfish pride, to worldly ambition, to unholy zeal. They minister to love of dress and display, to class rivalry, to strife for honor and preferment. Many of their students possess an ambition for worldly position or political power. These are not the aims and purposes of our schools, nor should such aims be fostered in the minds of our young men and women.

Let the spirit reigning in our schools from the day of enrolment to the last day of commencement week be such that in every exercise, social, educational, religious, God shall be honored, and the students impressed that our schools are institutions of God's planting, to fit and prepare their students as workers for holy service. Only on this basis of operation can our schools expect the fulness of the blessing of Heaven.

F. M. W.