The New School Year at the Nashville Agricultural and Normal Institute
By M. Bessie DeGraw
The fall term of the Nashville Agricultural and Normal Institute, known to many as the Madison school, opened October 18. The season in Tennessee is rather late this year, and the crops were scarcely gathered when the term began. The last days of the vacation were busy ones for the men at the school, for they filled two silos with sorghum-cane,—two hundred fifty tons of winter feed for the dairy stock. It is interesting to see students hitherto unaccustomed to such schooling, getting their first lessons in self-supporting work in the South in the harvest-field, or in treading ensilage, or in feeding the hummer, alongside students who have had longer experience in these practical phases of education. One is reminded of Gideon’s army. The Lord told him not to start to the battle with any timid or homesick soldiers, so all who were faint-hearted were allowed to go home. The voice of the hummer and the whistle of the engine were scarcely silenced when class work was begun. Fifty-five stalwart men and earnest, brave young women were enrolled. This is not a large company, but it is the largest in the history of the school. The school family numbers about seventy-five, and this crowds our present capacity. The Madison school is training soldiers for active service. It has a right, therefore, to select its students, and those who prove equal to the situation here are found to have good fiber for making missionaries. The school is a democratic body, and the government rests on the shoulders of all. Everybody has his part in the work of the institution, and practically every exercise of the school is educational along the lines of burden-bearing, independence of thought and action, ability to take the initiative, ability to endure hardships, faith in the leadings of God, self-reliance, and other traits which the Word and the Testimonies say must characterize those who have a part in the closing message. Brother Charles Franz, who has been laboring in Cuba for the past ten months, visited Madison at the beginning of the term. Brother Franz and his wife, and Sister Burgos, the third member of this Cuban company of workers, are all former students of the Nashville Agricultural and Normal Institute. They went through the training just mentioned; and in his recent visit, Brother Franz said the lessons learned here made possible the degree of success that has attended the work in Cuba. The spirit of prophecy says that such an all-round training will make the workers efficient in foreign fields. These workers find a wide space in which to work, and in spite of the fact that two of them had a language to learn, they have been self-supporting. They are about to begin a school for Cuban youth on an eighty-acre farm. The same school will offer opportunities for other teachers from the States to study the language and grow accustomed to Cuban life before starting centers themselves. There are over twenty industrial schools now being conducted by Madison students. The frequent reports from these schools by visiting representatives, and the occasional visits of students to near-by highland schools, keep alive an active interest in this work. The sanitarium family brings the school in touch with the outside world, and there is scarcely time for one to lose sight of the mission of the Madison school, or the work ahead of its students. The family is almost invariably a happy one, because it has a well-defined purpose. The Madison school family is looking forward to the completion of a new dining-hall. The rooms in the old plantation house, which have always served as dining-rooms, are crowded to the utmost. The new dining-room is being built by the class in carpentry, and it is hoped to have it ready to occupy by the first of the new year. We invite friends to visit us for the sake of learning more of the great South, its need of them, and their need of it.