Our Schools in India and Burma

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 8, 1913

Our Schools in India and Burma

No part of the four months in the Far East was of more real profit to me than the time spent in visiting our schools. Although I had tried to keep in touch with the educational work while in America, yet to meet the teachers and students face to face, to watch them at their work, and to see the results of Christian education on heathen hearts, profoundly impressed me with its great value as an evangelizing agency, and as a means of establishing the young people firmly in the principles of Christianity and in the fundamentals of the third angel’s message, so that when they go out from the school, to be surrounded by idolatry and unbelief, they may be able to withstand the temptations which are sure to overtake them.

In Christian lands religious teaching is recognized by all as essential. But in countries where idolatry has molded the life from generation to generation, where its revolting worship is intimately associated with every-day life, the value of Christian schools is more clearly seen.

To be able each day to plant seeds of truth in young hearts, to keep ever before their minds the story of the cross, to be able to answer their questions of doubt by words of faith and confidence, can only result in turning many of them from darkness to light. Then again, the growth of our schools in those countries is most encouraging. In India we now have a score of boarding-schools and village schools, with an attendance of nearly nine hundred students, about one third of whom are in the boarding-schools, under the constant supervision of Christian instructors. At present schools are being conducted in eight

languages,—Bengali, Santali, Hindi, Urdu, Marathi, Tamil, Burmese, and English.

The first school I visited was at Panwel, near Bombay, where the Marathi is spoken. Brother George Enoch, who is in charge of the work in west India, and who has made most excellent progress in the language, went with me. It was he who started the school at Panwel. We were given a most cordial reception by the chief men of the village, who, in their speeches of welcome, told how greatly they appreciated our mission school. Here I found three native teachers and seventy-one pupils—fifty-one girls, and twenty boys. The children were Christians, Mohammedans, Hindus, and Jews; but every day they were taught a portion of the Scriptures, and to sing Christian hymns. The cut (first page) shows the school at the time of my visit. The European at the left, dressed in white, is Brother Enoch. The older natives are the teachers and evangelists with their wives. This school is exactly in the center of the village, on the main street.

We drove from Panwel to Kalyan, a distance of sixteen miles, where we have two schools in charge of natives,—a high-caste school of forty-five, and a low-caste school of fourteen boys. The latter was being held under a tree, because at that time they were not able to get a building. It is at Kalyan, an important town which is the junction of the two trunk lines running into Bombay, that Brother and Sister M. D. Wood are located since their return to India. An excellent site of nine acres of ground has been purchased, and a bungalow is being built for them. I had the privilege of spending two days with them just before leaving India, and found them feeling very much at home, as they speak the Marathi fluently, and are not many miles from their former field of labor.

(Concluded next week)