Studies in Christian Education

The Papal system of education is typified by the word centralization; it exalts man, his ideas and his ways. In other words it is a study of the humanities, of the artificial rather than the natural. Such a scheme of education can best be worked out in connection with city life. Therefore, Papal schools and those schools patterned after the Papal model are usually located in towns and cities. On the contrary, Christian education means decentralization; it exalts God and His works; it is a return to God's way of doing. This system can best be developed in the country, on a farm where is to be gained an experience necessary to the carrying of the last message.

"God bids us establish schools away from the cities, where, without let or hindrance, we can carry on the work of education upon plans that are in harmony with the solemn message that is committed to us for the world. Such an education as this can best be worked out where there is land to cultivate... The usefulness learned on the school farm is the very education that is most essential for those who go out as missionaries to many foreign fields." ("The Madison School," pp. 28-29).

"Some do not appreciate the value of agricultural work. These should not plan for our schools, for they will hold everything from advancing in right lines. In the past their influence has been a hindrance." (Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 6, p. 178).

Concerning the school grounds it is said,

"This land is not to be occupied with buildings, except to provide the facilities essential for the teachers and students of the school. This land about the school is to be reserved as the school farm. It is to become a living parable to the students. The students are not to regard the school land as a common thing... They are to plant it with ornamental and fruit trees and to cultivate garden produce... The school farm is to be regarded as a lesson book in nature... (Ibid., pp. 181, 182).

"Bring all your energies into the development of the Lord's farm..." (Ibid., pp. 192).

"The reasons that have led us in a few places to turn away from cities and locate our schools in the country, hold good with the schools in other places... Had the money which our larger schools have used in expensive buildings been invested in procuring land where students could receive a proper education, so large a number of students would not now be struggling under the weight of increasing debt, and the work of these institutions would be in a more prosperous condition... The students would have secured an all-round education which would have prepared them, not only for practical work in various trades, but for a place on the Lord's farm in the earth made new." (Ibid., p. 177).

We have seen that God was endeavoring to arouse the popular churches to accept Christian education. This meant a reform in the location of their schools. A few years prior to 1844, many educational reformers were influenced to establish schools away from the city and on the farm.

The Methodists as early as 1735 under the direction of the Wesleys and Whitefield attempted to carry out God's plan of education in Georgia. They established a school ten miles from Savannah. The historian states, "Mr. Habbersham had located the five hundred acre grant." Wesley stated that this school should be "a seat and nursery of sound learning and religious education."

The University of Virginia on a farm

When Thomas Jefferson was making plans for the University of Virginia in a report made

"to the Speaker of the House of Delegates, it is stated that they purchased 'at a distance of a mile from Charlottesville... two hundred acres of land, on which was an eligible site for the college, high, dry, open, furnished with good water, and nothing in its vicinity which could threaten the health of the students.'" (Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia, p. 69).

Oberlin on a farm

Mr. Shipherd, the founder of Oberlin College, writes thus of his early plans,

"We are to establish schools of the first order, from the infant school up to an academic school, which shall afford a thorough education in English and useful languages, and if Providence favor it, at length instruction in theology-I mean practical theology. We are to connect work shops and the farm with the institution." (Oberlin: the colony and the college, p. 18).

A tract of land was purchased in the unbroken forests of Ohio, and 640 acres of this were kept for school purposes. The soil was clay and wet, and the tract "had been passed by for years as undesirable for occupation." For this very reason the purchase was severely criticized. It was made because the faith of the founders enabled them to see some things that even land experts overlooked. Let Seventh-day Adventists read the similar experience of the founders of the Avondale school, Cooranbong, Australia. The founders of Oberlin

"were guided by a wisdom higher than human, since a location, almost forbidding in its physical aspects, and for years quite difficult of access, was a condition indispensable to the formation of the character and the performance of the work to which Oberlin was clearly called." (The Story of Oberlin, p. 82).

Richmond College (Virginia) was founded by the Baptists in 1832.

"[They] bought Spring Farm, a small tract some four miles northwest of the city, and there on the Fourth of July, opened a manual labor school, called the Virginia Baptist Seminary." (Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia, p. 271).

Emory and Henry College, a Methodist institution, was established in Virginia in 1835. It was to be

"what was called, a manual labor college, an institution of learning in which the pupils were to be trained to labor as well as to think. This manual labor feature was a very prominent one in the enterprise, as it was first brought before the public... A farm containing six hundred acres of highly productive land was purchased and paid for out of the first funds raised. It was at first intended that this farm should be cultivated by student labor, for which a compensation was to be allowed which would assist in paying the student's expenses." (Ibid., pp. 253-254).

It would be interesting to study this reform further for many other schools followed this light and secured locations away from towns and cities. When manual training is studied this phase of educational reform will be brought again to your attention.