Educational Department by W. E. Howell

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 4, 1914

Educational Department

By W. E. Howell

J. L. SHAW, General Secretary F. GRIGGS, N. Am. Div. Secretary W. E. HOWELL, N. Am. Div. Asst. Secretary

Notes Afield

Fox River Academy

Before leaving the territory of Lake Union Conference, one of the most active, educationally, in the North American Division, I visited for the first time our academy near Sheridan, Ill. It is situated a pleasant drive of two miles from a spur of the Burlington Railroad, on a productive plot of forty-three acres, including the school campus. All the land is tillable but about five acres, and this is good for pasturage.

Owing largely to frequent changes in the teaching force and to the consequent lack of thoroughly working the territory for students, the enrollment of this school has decreased from seventy to fifty the last three years. Prof. J. R. Clymer, the principal, who is a seasoned teacher, came too late last year to work the field, but vigorous campaigning is planned for this summer. The enrollment the past year was fifty, with forty-one held in attendance to the close. With two conferences to supply students, there ought to be at least one hundred in the school next year, and the managers are aiming at this goal. In harmony with the Lake Union plan, only ten grades are taught, and the teachers are determined to make the school tell in quality what it may lack in scope.

Oak Park Academy

Situated at the geographical center of Iowa, this school is the successor of the academy formerly conducted at Stuart. It stands on a commanding eminence near the town of Nevada, on a common campus with the Iowa Sanitarium. It is substantially built of brick, with the dormitories and schoolrooms all in one inclosure. Some excellent work has been done in the school this year, but it has suffered much from frequent changes in faculty and working plans.

All the teachers but one in this school were changed last summer, and all but one will be changed again this summer. Nevertheless the school has excellent possibilities. While the enrollment the past year was only one hundred and one, with about sixty held in attendance to the close, yet the Iowa Conference has a constituency of twenty-five hundred, with close to five hundred young people. There is no reason why the academy should not enroll two hundred next year. The students have pledged themselves to try to bring back one each next autumn, and with the help of the teachers and field workers they can do it if they set about it with a will.

Schools for Other Nationalities

It is a matter of gratification that our educational system includes distinct schools for the foreign-speaking people of the United States. The justification for such schools is found in the fact that there are, for example, enough Germans, Danish-Norwegians, and Swedes in this country to form an important mission field for each. Their number is being constantly added to by fresh recruits from the old country. There is also a constant movement back to the fatherland, either for temporary visit or business or for permanent residence. Too little has been done for these classes in the past, both because we have not been keenly alive to the opportunity they afford for aggressive effort, and because we have not had qualified laborers to work for them. Schools conducted in their own language, then, will serve the double purpose of winning and establishing younger people in the truth, and of developing workers to carry the message into the homes of their own nationality in this country and abroad.

One striking example comes to my mind of how work for foreign-speaking peoples in our own country may affect the work abroad. While laboring in Greece a few years ago, I met in Athens a Greek who had come to America and gone into business. Coming in contact with Age to Come teachings, he accepted them, closed out his business, returned to Greece, and at his own charges had Age to Come literature translated into Greek, and personally scattered these teachings throughout Athens and several outlying districts. At the time I met him, he had already developed two or three companies of believers. Three summers ago, also, while in San Francisco I met two Sabbath-keeping Greeks who told me that they were constantly writing and sending literature to relatives and friends in Greece, and were looking out for others who came to this country, that they might receive the truth.

One thriving school for foreigners which is doing good work in soul winning and in training for service is the—

Broadview Swedish Seminary

It is located a little west of Chicago, a city which is said to contain more Swedes than any other city in the world except Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. Brother G. E. Nord, who spent two years at Battle Creek College and two at Union College, besides doing evangelistic work in New York City, has been principal of the school during the four years of its existence. Under his enterprising leadership, with the strong field support of Elders Olsen and Mortenson, the enrollment has increased from twenty-two to fifty, the school debt has been reduced $2,000 the last two years, and $7,000 worth of improvements has been made. The Swedish Seventh-day Adventist constituency in America is only 1,500, yet they have given $23,000 to the seminary since it was started.

Other efficient members of the faculty are J. M. Erikson, who was ready for ordination as a Baptist minister when the truth found him, who taught several years in the Swedish department of Union College, and has served in the ministry in Sweden; H. O. Olson, who holds a master's degree from the University of Minnesota, studied one year at Upsala University, Sweden, and has spent two summers in the ministry; A. G. Goude, a graduate of Union College four years ago, who goes to agricultural college next year to qualify for better service on the seminary farm, which consists of seventy-seven acres, with an additional forty rented. Next year the faculty will be strengthened by the addition of Dr. and Mrs. Jespersson, both college graduates in both literary work and medicine, and formerly missionaries in Jerusalem and in Algeria. The seminary maintains a strong balance in industrial education, and a fervent spiritual and missionary spirit pervades all the work of the school.

W. E. H.