The West Indian Training-School by GEO. F. ENOCH

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 15, 1906

The West Indian Training-School

By GEO. F. ENOCH

Some Unique Features

GEO. F. ENOCH

The West Indian Training-school will occupy a unique position in our school family. So far as the writer knows, it is the first large school that we have started within the tropics. It has already a large constituency to draw from. The tropical feature of the school brings in several interesting variations from the ordinary school program.

To begin with, it is summer all the time. Nature is always in her brightest dress. Crops grow the year round. It is always possible to have the students learn the lessons of seed-time and harvest. School work can be easily carried on the year round. Books for a time, and then the book of nature for a time, can be so interchanged that neither need become irksome. In northern climes, school is usually in session during the bleak winter, and vacation is the season of the growing plants. Such a situation can not take place in this school.

Not only will it be possible to continue the studies the year round, but many students will be compelled to stay at the school until their work is finally completed. The faculty, in such a case, need not worry lest vacation influences should undo the good derived from the work of the school year.

The industrial feature of this school is also interesting. It is not industrial from choice alone, but from compulsion. For years the Lord has instructed us that we should connect industries with our school. Here is a good-sized school starting on its course, not with industrial work as a side issue, or as an experiment, but as a part of its very life. It must prosper or fail with its industries. The chief reason for this is that the majority of our young people will land on the grounds with scarcely more than a shilling in their pockets. The school will have to take their mind and muscle, and in some way convert it into support for the school.

If the right sort of educators will take hold of this proposition, and push it through to success, it is evident that this very condition will make for strength, both for the institution and for those who shall be trained therein.

A good farm of one hundred acres has been secured. The land is good. The railway crosses one corner of the farm, with a station only one and one-half miles away. Good markets are handy. For the export trade, bananas, pineapples, oranges, and grapefruit will be raised. For the home market all tropical grains, vegetables, and other crops can be planted. The farm has not been under cultivation for several years, and will have to be cleared of the bush that has grown up. Not only will those in charge of this school be able to raise that which is good for food, but that which is pleasant to the sight as well. In these lands of perpetual sunshine, beneath summer skies, where no cold breath of winter ever hinders or blasts vegetation, the possibilities are beyond description. Palms, ornamental shrubs, ferns, and fragrant flowers of every sort will grow or blossom the year round. O how much these people need a model school, from which they can go to make their homes and surroundings beautiful!

Other industries, such as carpentry, tailoring, shoemaking, and the manufacture of Panama hats, will be connected with this school. Already there are more than twelve young men and women working as hard as they can, receiving only their board, their labor going to their credit on tuition as soon as the school can be started. This should be encouraging to us, and give us a practical example of the mettle of the West Indian young people.

The General Conference brethren have indorsed this school, and their treasurer is ready to receive any donations that the Lord may impress the hearts of our people to give. This plea demands something more than an interested reading. You need not send a donation to the West Indies. All you need do is to pay to the treasurer of your church to whom you pay your tithe whatever the Lord impresses you to give, being sure to have it sent in as for the West Indian Training-school.

Some of our people think that there

are too many calls. If we would only stop to think that every call from the regions beyond means an opportunity to invest in souls, we should regard it a great privilege. Like the scarlet thread that is woven into the texture of the dollar bill, even so the scarlet thread of the blood of Jesus Christ runs through every dollar that comes into our possession, and we must spend that dollar with that in mind. There is enough money spent unnecessarily by our people to equip many such a needy enterprise. Can we read the words of the Master. “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me,” and be unresponsive? Self-denial has been well defined as denying one’s self for the benefit of others, or for the future.

“There’s a cry from the dark to-night That haunts the darkened room, From that other sheep, on the broken steep, At the edge of eternal doom.”

We feel sure that there will be a hearty response to this pressing plea. What will you do?