Educational Work in the South

Educational Work in the South

By M. Bessie DeGraw

This article appeared in

The Advent Review & Sabbath Herald

Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C., May 23, 1912,Vol. 89, No. 21

D'AUBIGNE, writing of the sixteenth century Reformation, says : " God prepares slowly and from afar that which he designs to accomplish. . . Then when the time is come, he affects the greatest results by the smallest means."

The historian uttered a truth which is by no means confined to that great movement. It is the enunciation of a principle seen often in history. As a principle, it is just as true in the history of the South as it ever was in Luther's time.

Forty years or more ago Seventh-day Adventists were told to occupy the South because the time had come to plant here principles of liberty, of religion, and of education that would make the desert blossom as the rose. That message was a timely one. The God in heaven was even then bringing forces together that would raise the South from its low estate, and he wanted his people to be leaders in the great upward movement. Some others, like Colonel Armstrong, Mr. Geo. Peabody, Dr. Curry, and Mr. Knapp, saw more in it than we did. But be that as it may, our chance is not yet fully past.

The South needs help, and that help can come through a system of education as through no other avenue. And it is, I certainly believe, in the order of Providence that a Southern man, a man in sympathy with the great struggling masses of the South, a man born in the mountains, acquainted with Southern conditions, and educated to esteem manual labor, now stands at the head of the United States Department of Education.

We were forcibly brought to see this a few days ago when Dr. P. P. Claxton, present United States Commissioner of Education, and formerly an East Tennessee man, visited the Nashville Agricultural and Normal Institute and addressed its school and sanitarium family.

Dr. Claxton is a man deeply converted to the principles of a threefold education. Industrial training, the farm school, thoroughly educated, all-round teachers, are the forces through which he feels that the world is to be redeemed.

Dr. Claxton's talk on practical education brought many a burst of applause. So strong and clear-cut were some of his statements that the thought would go from one to another, " Where did he get that truth? Has he read ' Education '? "

But here comes the answer. God spoke to men in Babylon in the year of the birth of Christ as clearly and easily as he spoke to Zacharias in Jerusalem, to Mary and Joseph in Nazareth, or to the shepherds on the hills of Bethlehem. So it will prove to be to-day.

Let me give you a few of Dr. Claxton's thoughts :

"Abstract thinking is not education; it never has been, and it never will be. Education is the intelligent handling of things about us. It can not be crammed down the throat; it can not be ' clothed upon.' The best way to develop a boy is by the use of the common, ordinary things of life.

"The idea that liberal education frees one from work is a mistake. Education does not free from labor. True education fits a man to deal with the things at hand. It dignifies labor. "

Paul, the great apostle, boasted that as a missionary he was indebted to no man for his support, but labored unceasingly for others, supporting himself by hand labor meanwhile.

"Give me fifty well-trained teachers, and I will accomplish more than with fifty armies.

"Christ said, 'I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from evil.' That is the object of education,— not to take a man out of the world, but to raise him above the evil of his natural surroundings."

The South is to receive the message soon. It is a field, even now ripe for the harvest. God has put at the head of the educational work of the nation a man who knows the needs of the South, who senses the fact that industrial education is the great lever of the world's uplift,— a man who is willing to put forth his efforts to encourage all who believe these things.

Consider these facts, and answer if the South ought not to have hundreds of the very best-educated teachers, ministers, and other workers in the ranks. Who will answer?

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