Adventist Education

Adventist Education--What It's All About

Education without relevance and significance is meaningless

WILBERT M. SCHNEIDER President, Southern Missionary College


 

Education without relevance and significance is virtually meaningless. Al­though it is defined by Ellen G. White as the harmonious development of hand, heart, and mind, sometimes little thought is given to its full meaning, and the expression may therefore become a cliché as used to define Adventist education. Relevance and significance in Seventh-day Adventist education must continue to prevail if grad­uates are to develop a selfless service philos­ophy so necessary to fulfill the Master's commission to His followers.

Jesus and a High School Diploma

Secular education in general is preparing the student for a passport to an urban so­ciety but leaving untouched the question as to what kind of individual he ought to be. Providing for one's temporal needs must be considered a secondary motive in Adventist education. By modern standards of education, Jesus would probably be un­able to qualify for a high school diploma. Yet, it is true that no other individual has ever experienced such peace or joy within himself or such mastery over the problems of life. In contemplating the life of Christ one is impressed with the quality of His education, by the kind of person He was, by how He experienced life, and not by what He possessed or what He could do vo­cationally.

Any adequate philosophy of education today must be chiefly concerned with what kind of person one is, not by what one can do or what one can buy of goods and pleas­ures. The Christian college graduate should be adequate to life's problems. This is the crux of our concern in structuring the en­tire educational program dealing with the spiritual, social, and mental processes. The student as a child of God must master all emotional response to the problem stimuli inherent in life, such as pain, ill-health, death, ingratitude, injustice, failure, success, adulation, fame, money, ambition, and all other stresses that arise from per­sonal relationships. Paul speaks of this ex­perience to the Galatians as follows: "But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." This adequacy is what Christ speaks of when He says, "My peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you." "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." "In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." The average citizen, struggling under the burdens of modern living—its tension struc­tures and "moral morassity"—may be ob­served as having dismally failed in that he has been overcome by the world.

It is difficult to achieve an adequate life of emotional maturity and righteous judg­ment except as one experiences the power of God through faith. The intellectual ex­ercises of logic, philosophy, concept, ra­tionality, and definition are utterly inca­pable of providing the type of adequacy essential to life unless they are part of an individual's commitment to God. It is in knowing God through faith that man is en­abled to feel adequate to life's experience.

"Ram It In, Jam It In"

The well-known educational jingle which runs: "Rain it in, jam it in, students' heads are hollow. Ram it in, jam it in, there's plenty more to follow," is significant in terms of the explosion of knowledge that may be understood when considering that factual information in virtually every academic discipline is doubling about every ten years. Obviously it will be impossible to think of mastery of a field in terms of the percentage of facts within it which one keeps in mind. Although the acquirement of factual knowledge is exceedingly impor­tant to the student as he prepares for fu­ture service, a program of education in­tended to produce fact-filled freaks should command little attention. We must look beyond the facts for a reason to educate. The moral crisis in education demands that the Christian college campus serve as a bul­wark against the erosion of Christian mor­als. Relevance in Adventist education de­mands continued emphasis on man as a moral being intent on taking his place in society as a responsible individual. It is shameful to confess that the goals of secular education have been geared more to the students' superficial physical needs than to the spiritual, from which all signif­icant social values are derived. This is ob­vious, however, as one views with alarm the ever-increasing segment of society iden­tified as alcoholics, speed killers, adulterers, delinquents, criminals, addicts, neurotics, sophisticates, and mentally ill.

Higher Than Telephones and TV

Adventist education cannot be too con­cerned with the conversion of the coun­try's great riches to one's pleasure and prestige. The development of the great Christian values of morality which Scripture identifies as the fruits of the Spirit is far more significant. The function of educa­tion must be moral if it is to achieve Chris­tian ends. Without this philosophy it will not be possible to lead a bewildered hu­manity, wandering in a wilderness of licen­tious living with heads crammed full of knowledge, empty souls, and spirits faint, to a more abundant life with eternity as its goal. In general, man no longer struggles with the elemental effort to live, yet there is a great need to find a focus in education that will lend form, purpose, reason, and order to student lives. The Christian can­not be content with the trappings of life. Civilization to be meaningful, must be higher than telephones and electric lights, automobiles and television sets. These in­ventions have revolutionized our way of life, but at the same time have become false symbols of civilization which may be con­sidered the pagan idols of modern times.

All education is generally structured with the student and his future needs in mind, as he must adapt himself to a rapidly changing society. Never before has higher education experienced such flux and change as it reacts to pressures and prob­lems resulting from increased knowledge, social service demands, higher costs, chang­ing attitudes, and larger enrollments. In designing "the" effective curriculum, col­lege faculties have focused their attention on such issues as culture versus utility, stu­dent versus the subject approach, general versus the specific, prescribed (closed) ver­sus the elective (open), sciences versus the humanities, and who really should be edu­cated. All these issues are important in curricula construction, and it is significant to note the continuous struggle of attempt­ing an accommodation of all such issues.

"To Thine Own Self Be True"

Without denying the value of curricular change, society nevertheless recognizes om­inously the fact that the students' needs are not being met in terms of eternal values. Acquisition is becoming the hallmark of success as the economy of man and its prod­ucts take precedence in education to that which would emphasize the character of man. This secular subversion of education has divested the educational processes of the most meaningful values necessary in human relationships if man is to survive at all. One must continuously recognize that the function of education should first be moral and second utilitarian. In the He­brew schools prior to the Renaissance the object of education was to gain an under­standing of what the student ought to be and what he had to do to please God, and the end product was to experience a good life on this earth and immortality in the hereafter.

Before man can be a fit member of so­ciety he must first experience fitness. Shake­speare expresses this truth in what he has the aged Polonius say to his son, Laertes, prior to his leaving for college: "This above all—to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man."

True Intellectual Freedom

The minister, physician, teacher, nurse, businessman, lawyer, farmer, researcher, et cetera, will never experience the abundant life promised unless the philosophy of the Master's words is understood and prac­ticed—"Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endur­eth unto everlasting life." The prophet Isaiah expressed the same truth in these words: "Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not?" The truth cannot "free" the mind by giving intellec­tual assent to its verity. There must be a "doing" of His word. "If ye continue in my word, then are ve my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." To be intellectually free, the child of God must be totally com­mitted to an understanding of His will and philosophy as revealed in Holy Writ; and thereafter pursue it in practice.

It is diabolical to assume that the student to be educated must imbibe of the philo­sophical writings of every unregenerated mind. Satan established this false concept of education in Eden when declaring to Eve that her perception and wisdom would be Godlike if only she would commit her­self to his philosophy. The problem, then, is to endow subject matter and personal teacher-student relationships with religious emphasis. Teachers, like Ezra, must pre­pare their minds to "know God's law and to do it." Whatever subjects are taught should be refined by their Christian charac­ters and personalities. 

Apron Strings of Heaven

Little wonder that such a philosophy is foreign to students today. Education has been bared of scriptural truth which leaves the student to exclaim: "The only one left to believe in is Man, so I figure we've got to prepare him for the responsibilities of being God."—Time, June 9, 1967, p. 90. Another student writes: "My faith is be­hind me, not out in front. I am not drawn ahead by the apron strings of heaven; I am pushing at crashing speeds into the un­knowns. I've made no contract with God; his promises and threats do not interest or frighten me. My power is in me, in all of us. Life is this power."—Ibid. A lack of insti­tutional and teacher commitment to eter­nal verities leaves the student at sea in a ship without a rudder. Judgment values formed under such conditions breed a last-day society as described by Paul writing to Timothy: "This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false ac­cusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but deny­ing the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth" (2 Tim. 3:1-7).

Shakespeare also aptly describes what may happen to a society following strange theories and doctrines, but he quickly fol­lows with an interesting conclusion. It is found in the opening portion of Act V within the tragedy, where Lady Macbeth is walking in her sleep. She imagines in her sleep that the blood of the old king has stained her hands. She has been going through the actions of washing her hands and then says:

 Here's the smell of the blood still; all the per­fumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.

As she continues, the old doctor and the gentlewoman watch until she has gone back to bed, and the scene comes to a close with the doctor saying:

 Unnatural deeds Do breed unnatural troubles: infected minds To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets. More needs she the divine than the physician—God, God forgive us all!

Our world is crisscrossed with shadowed deeds and vicious doing in breaking down the pillars of society—the home, the church, and government; and more need we "the divine than the physician."

If today a college freshman in English is assigned a composition on the topic, "Why I Want a College Education," more than ninety percent of the students will have as their primary objective a professional or technical skill that will provide most abun­dantly of the economy's goods, services, and pleasures. For this reason thousands of stu­dents are rebelling against the society (the establishment) that gives emphasis to that which cannot satisfy the longing of the inner man. Restlessness sets in because the student finds in secular education little that is relevant or significant to life and its genuine needs. His fulfillment has not and cannot be achieved or experienced, and he gropes in vain for that which is true, honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good report. His concepts of society and the in­dividuals ordering it are best described by such words as: greed, conformity, hypoc­risy, cunning, devisive, harsh, cold, unlove­able, and social piety. As a result, then, the young withdraw from realism into a world of total abstraction and aloofness in the hope of finding the eternal values that can bring joy and fulfillment to their existence. Not knowing the source of such values, they resort to the use of harmful drugs and practices that excite the mind and debase the body and actually produce a spiritual imagery, although false in its origin and fruition. In contrast, the well-adjusted Christian student "drinking at the foun­tain of life will not, like the worldling, manifest a longing desire for change and pleasure" (Counsels to Parents, Teachers, and Students, p. 98).

(To be continued)


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WILBERT M. SCHNEIDER President, Southern Missionary College


May 1968

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