School Work in the Latin Union by JEAN VUILLEUMIER.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 6, 1906

School Work in the Latin Union

By JEAN VUILLEUMIER.

Our school work in this field is yet in its first stages. We have no church-schools. There have been some attempts in that direction, but they did not succeed. Once we had a general church-school for the whole field, but it did not prove a success. On account of the difficulty in attending the public high schools and the normal schools, which hold classes on the Sabbath, our young people have little inclination to get a higher education, so we can hardly expect to obtain Seventh-day Adventist teachers from that source.

Our people here would very much like an intermediate industrial school in which their children could spend profitably the years between fourteen and seventeen or eighteen, while preparing to enter the work. Not being farmers, many are at a loss to know what to do with their children from the time they leave the public school until they are old enough to enter the work. But at present we are not prepared to open such a school.

The cry for a training-school at our annual meetings has at times become painful. Five years ago a workers' school of three to six months' duration was organized by Brother Wilkinson. I held one session in Geneva and one in Paris, both of which had excellent results. The great need was a permanent location. The purchase of the Gland property settled the question, and a permanent school was immediately started. The first school year lasted six months. Out of twelve students, seven entered the work, or took up the nurses' course at the sanitarium.

Our second school year lasted nine months. It closed June 15. Our nine students represented Switzerland (4), France (3), Italy (1), and Spain (1). Our course of study embraced Bible, history, French grammar and rhetoric, anatomy and philosophy, arithmetic and bookkeeping, and vocal music. Dr. De Forest, Sisters Nonaby and Kappeler, graduates of Valence and Winterthur Normal and Technical schools respectively, Brother Tièche, president of the Swiss Conference, and the undersigned took part in the teaching.

Five hours each afternoon were devoted to manual work, the boys working on the farm, and the girls doing housework. On Monday the whole day was spent in manual labor.

We thank God for the blessings and experience of this school. Its trials and victories have taught us that our God and his precious cause are its only object and glory, and its only source of success.

With the exception of one student, not a Seventh-day Adventist, and another one who enters the nurses' course, all our students have entered the work since the close of the school.

Beginning with the next school year, September 3, there is to be a closer connection between our evangelistic class and the sanitarium nurses' class, as they will take some of the studies in common. As we do not expect a larger number of students this year than last year, it has been decided to have only one term, of four months' duration.

Our prayer is that God may bless and prosper this modest nursery of gospel workers located near, and an equal distance from the Bible schools founded by Calvin and Beza at Geneva and Lausanne, three hundred and fifty years ago, schools which have now grown into universities, but in which the word of God is superseded and undermined by science and higher criticism.

JEAN VUILLEUMIER.