p. 17 | Among the Schools by Frederick Griggs

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 17, 1916

Among the Schools

By Frederick Griggs

ON my way to and from the fall council I visited the following schools: Southern Training School, Nashville Agricultural and Industrial Institute, the Oakwood Manual Training School, Keene Academy, San Fernando Academy, Lodi Academy, Pacific Union College, Walla Walla College, Lacombe Industrial Academy, Mount Ellis Academy, Campion Academy, the Hastings Intermediate School, Union College, Oak Park Academy, Emmanuel Missionary College, Bethel Academy, and the Broadview Swedish Seminary.

I found in all these schools a spirit of consecration. I was pleased with the efforts being made to improve the appearance of the buildings and grounds. Education is not found alone in books. Well-painted buildings, clean walls, oiled floors, neat rugs and substantial furniture, well-kept lawns, and an abundance of shrubbery artistically disposed about the grounds, have in themselves large elements of education. This our faculties are recognizing, and there is a constant improvement in the appearance of our school premises.

The strong movement for financial reform in our denomination is having a wholesome effect on the finances of our schools. In every school that I visited, this question is receiving careful consideration. The managers of our schools have a great task to strengthen and upbuild all features of their work, and at the same time to meet from month to month the regular operating expenses. A number of our schools are this year exerting themselves to be entirely free from debt, and without doubt they will be able to report the liquidation of their entire indebtedness before the close of the present year.

The school managements are endeavoring

to improve the personnel of their faculties; where changes are necessary, an effort is made to strengthen the work by securing more highly educated and efficient teachers. It is well, however, that there is also a growing desire on the part of boards of management to change the teaching force as little as possible.

With two or three exceptions every school that I visited has a larger enrolment than last year. This is as it should be.

The Missionary Volunteer Department is leading our young men and young women to recognize the duty that they owe to God and their fellow men, to secure an education which will fit them for gospel service. Our constantly enlarging church membership is another means of increasing our schools. Moreover, our school managements are adopting new and better means of promoting the interests of the schools among the churches. The work of our Publishing Department is also a means of increasing the attendance, and the number of students earning scholarships is increasing from year to year.

The educational council and conventions held last summer have in many practical ways directly affected our schools. There is a manifest determination on the part of our teachers so to unite and coöperate as to increase the strength and efficiency of every department; the courses of study are being strengthened; better textbooks are used, and improved methods of teaching are followed. The requirements made by the council in the matter of laboratories, libraries, and general equipment are already having their effect.

But of all lines of growth and improvement, the religious interest of our schools is most encouraging. From the opening of the year the presence of God and the manifest working of his Holy Spirit have characterized them. This good spirit bore abundant fruit during the week of prayer. It was my privilege to be with three of our schools at this season, and to visit three directly after, and it is my firm belief that this last week of prayer produced a richer harvest of souls than any preceding one. After all, this is the great end of our school undertakings. The converted student will be a worker for God; others cannot.

While in the South I visited Tuskegee Institute, Booker T. Washington's school. Here is a great institution, with an enrolment of nearly fifteen hundred students, that is giving a practical education to a needy people. It is loyally supported by men and women not connected with the school, for its income does not by any means meet its expenses. There is a lesson to our people in this. Money invested in the education of earnest youth will yield larger returns than any other investment.

I also went to Battleford, Saskatchewan, where the Saskatchewan Conference is establishing an intermediate school. They have secured from the government, on a ten-year lease, with a ten-year renewal clause, a large Indian school property. The government recently closed the school, and our people obtained it for the nominal rental of $5 a year. The plant has sixteen buildings, and 56½ acres, so it costs our people less than one cent an acre per year. The conference is investing several thousand dollars in remodeling the large school building. When this is done, they will have admirable facilities with which they may carry forward the school work of their conference.

We must "be strong and of a good courage" in our school work, for our command to go forward is of God.

FREDERICK GRIGGS.