The Education Needed by E. K. Slade

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 1, 1906

The Education Needed

By E. K. Slade

The education needed by the people of God will be just as different from that of the world as God's ways and thoughts are different from the ways and thoughts of this world. We are told that they are as different from ours as the heavens are higher than the earth. This language often seems an exaggeration, but when we come to know better the ways of God and to see how diametrically different they are from the ways of this world, we can easily see the truthfulness of that expression recorded in Isa. 55:9.

Many of our youth have not been awakened to the great importance of entering fully into the privileges that are offered in our educational work. Not only do those who are planning to enter public work of some nature, need the benefit of this higher education, but every one who hopes to have a home in the kingdom of God should gladly embrace the opportunity of entering the school here, that will lay the foundation upon which to build for all eternity.

I wish to speak of the more practical phase of the subject. Just now, the cause is demanding every available young man and woman in our ranks. The Lord has led our conferences to establish intermediate schools and training-schools in almost every section of the country. A most excellent corps of teachers has been fitted up for the work, so that each of our schools is manned with a faculty well fitted for the work for which the school stands. It has been gratifying to know that the attendance at our schools is better this fall than formerly, yet there are many of our young people of talent and ability who are not availing themselves of the opportunity of attending our schools. Does it not fall upon local conference officers, church elders, and parents everywhere, to take this matter up with the young people, and help them to plan to enter college?

Many have felt that it would be impossible for them to do so, on account of a lack of means. I have often said that if young men or women having health really desire to get an education, they will get it. They need to be helped to desire this more than anything else. When it becomes the supreme object in the life of a young person to be trained in harmony with the principles underlying our whole work, it will be hard to place in the way obstacles that will defeat. I recall cases of young men and women, having nothing in the world but their own hands to help them, who during the past summer have sold books enough to more than pay for a year's schooling. There are hundreds of young people in our ranks who can do this just as well as they did. The very work of selling the books may be counted as the first course in their education, and of as much importance as any course that will ever follow it.

What we are needing to-day is to have an education that will train for service. We should not countenance as true education anything that does not train to toil. An army is needed at this time, that will be fitted to endure hardness, as good soldiers. The idea is not to feel that one is to be fitted to fill some high position far above the practical things of life, but to be an effective worker in coping with the conditions that must be met in the great work committed to us as a people. Anything that tends to inflation or headiness does not belong to the education that our cause needs.

When one is brought to realize that all wisdom and efficiency come from above, and that the knowledge attained is not secured through any mental power or process of reasoning that we may possess, there is no chance for that puffing up, or the mere desire to excel, that is so foreign to true education.

I wish to appeal to our young people, by this means and through those who may read these lines, to have a fixed purpose to secure the education that is needed just now for the great work before us. If you will set your faces like a flint for the accomplishment of this end, I know of nothing that will stand in your way to turn you aside. E. K. SLADE.