A WORD OF WARNING by C. McReynolds

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 30, 1901

A WORD OF WARNING.

By C. McReynolds

We are an aggressive people, and God wants that kind of people; but He wants the aggressiveness used in regular and orderly ways, that confusion may not result. Circumstances with which we have come in contact recently have suggested that it would be well to say a word in regard to the matter of our schools.

Church schools, intermediate Conference schools, and our academies and colleges are all to work as one united whole for the education of our children and youth, to fit them to go out as workers in the Master's vineyard. But here is a church that says, We have but a small school, and we are able to build a home, employ two or more teachers, and have students come in from other places, and thus make this a large school, for this part of the Conference. We will teach the grades as high as it is necessary for those who come.

Another church school publishes in the REVIEW that we are going to add two important features to our course of study for next year. We will teach phonography and offer a nurses' training course, to be taught by a sanitarium nurse; and others rise up and offer this and that, till it is true that in the various church schools, many of which have very limited facilities, one can get, or at least is offered, almost all that he can get at Keene Academy or Union College.

Now it is a fact that the General Conference created an Advisory Educational Committee, and the General Conference also recommended that at least one man be appointed in each Conference to take special oversight, in an advisory way, of the church and other schools in the Conference; but some of these churches, and even some of the teachers, failed to notice that any such arrangement was recommended. It was also recommended that the students be graded, and that the studies and work offered in the church and intermediate schools be graded, so that they will not undertake to do the work that requires greater facilities than they are likely to have, and the students who should be in our colleges and academies be drawn to these schools.

If we are to have all the higher work done in our church schools and in the intermediate schools, then we would better close our colleges and academies, sell out the property, and pay the debts that way. Now we are sure that no one would advise such a thing, and we believe all this confusion has arisen from a failure to consider the result that would follow if all the church schools were to offer what ours does. Let us take counsel of those who are appointed to that work, and order, instead of confusion, will result. Prof. C. C. Lewis is elected Educational Secretary for the Northwestern and Southwestern Union Conferences, and he will be in touch with the educational committee appointed by the General Conference.

C. McREYNOLDS, Pres. S. W. U. Conf.