The Madison School and Its Activities
Report Rendered by Dr. E. A. Sutherland at a Southern Union Conference Session.
The Southern Union Worker
Ooltewah, Tennessee,
April 1, 1920
Vol. XIV No. 15
The early history of Madison is familiar to most of you, so it is unnecessary to do more than refer to a few incidents in its founding. The selection of the site was made by Sister White, as you have read in her own words.
When we came to the South it was with the idea of starting a rural school in some distant mountain region, but Sister White said, No, that is not God's plan for you. You should conduct a training school for workers, and the school should be near Nashville, near enough, she said, so that there would be a connection between the school and the city work. In those early days we could not see as much light in that instruction as we have seen since and as we see in the light of recent developments.
The work of the institution is outlined in the words of Sister White when she speaks of Madison as "a training school for home and foreign missionaries." She says further: "If many more in other schools were receiving a similar training, we as a people would be a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. The message would be quickly carried to every country, and souls now in darkness would be brought to the light. It would be pleasing to God if, while the Madison School has been doing its work, other such schools had been established in different parts of the Southern field."
The School started in a humble way, and compared with many others, it is still a very small institution, but it has had a quiet, steady growth. It is the object of the workers to maintain the strictest system of economy and to teach the art of effective educational work with simple equipment. Foreseeing the times we are entering, we are today more determined than ever to curtail our wants, to adhere strictly to the system of education taught by the Spirit of Prophecy.
We are told that we should reach the world with the truths of the third angel's message, and that people will come to us has been demonstrated from the first years of the school and is being demonstrated more and more as the work develops. The medical work brings several hundred people under our roof every year. Not only the treatments, but everything else about the place is a sermon to them. A man who is both an educator and a mission worker said recently, "You are making men and women; you are developing character. You are doing some things that no one else in this country is doing. I know that the influence of my stay out here will remain with me for the rest of my life. The work you are doing is wonderful, and I bid you God-speed."
The influence of a school cannot be judged by the number in attendance, nevertheless we are pleased to report that this year the school family is the largest in the history of the institution. We are feeding over 150 at the present time, 25 of whom are faculty members and commissioned workers.
We are working for a mature class of men and women, and endeavor to choose as wisely as possible. We refuse admittance to a good many who do not come up to the requirements. We want people who, with brief training, can be prepared for self-supporting missionary activities, principally in the Southern field; because at Madison students can work for eir school expenses, others are attracted to the school, but we want those only who desire to be Southern workers largely on a self-supporting basis.
In the words of the General Conference recommendation, Madison is recognized as a part of the denomination's educational system. Speaking of the Southern schools: "We recommend that these schools be enlarged and strengthened, and that hereafter the Madison School and the efforts which have sprung or may spring from it shall be considered a part of the regular work of the denomination, and that the Madison School shall be regarded by the denomination as a training school for workers for rural schools in the mountain districts of the South."
Of these schools Elder Daniells says: "These schools are having an excellent influence, are raising the surrounding communities to a higher standard of life, and gaining souls for the Lord. But there are not enough of them, and those that have been started are poorly supplied with necessary facilities. They are worthy of encouragement and assistance, for they are doing an important part in giving the last warning message in a difficult, yet fruitful field."
Professor Griggs, while standing at the head of the educational department, wrote: "Our people and our churches everywhere should recognize the responsibility which rests upon them to assist in the establishment and maintenance of these schools, and in embracing the many opportunities throughout the South for work of this character. We must not leave these workers to carry the load alone. We have many men, successful business men, who might shape their business affairs to take up this work. They themselves might not be able personally to conduct the schools, but they could maintain the home and support a teacher, and thus establish a center from which would radiate the light for this hour."
Speaking of class work at Madson in the terms of other schools, we say that it is offering twelve grades of work, and above that a large number of elective subjects along technical lines, training teachers, nurses, agriculturists, and workers along domestic science lines.
Correlation—One feature of the educational work is the strong effort to correlate subjects in order to make the education apply directly to the life of students. To illustrate: The English department is linked with the printing, the printing office being the laboratory for the English students. Physics is correlated with agriculture and chemistry with both agriculture and the domestic sciences.
Object—It is the object of the school to prepare students for a definite work in the vineyard, and for that reason everyone is urged to have a definite aim and strike hard for that object.
A School of Activities--It has been the continued object of the school to stress those activities that are both educational and that will help students pay their school expenses. Year by year the faculty is learning better how to make all industries educational. Special classwork is offered to all the industries, and in addition to that the common duties of life are taught in class as well as in the work-room, kitchen or shop, and students are graded on work as well as upon studies. I can illustrate this by the dairy. The man at the head of the department is a teacher, and he meets the men working for him once each week for regular classwork. This is in addition to the regular coursework offered in dairying.
The industries of the place run about as this: Farming, gardening, fruit-raising, beekeeping, dairying, stock-raising, poultry-raising, sheep and goats, mechanical work in carpentry, tool-repairing and blacksmithing, food factory work, cooking, baking, laundering, sewing, tailoring, weaving, printing, nursing, and all the work about the Sanitarium.
The School raises grains for family and stock; grinds its own flour, and supplies the table very largely from its own garden and orchard.
We grind our own graham flour and corn meal; dry our own greens, and can our own fruit and vegetables. All these things are a wonderful education to men and women who look forward to the time when they will have a rural base and have these things to do for themselves and their community. This atmosphere surrounding students and teachers makes teaching a joy.
It is impossible to enumerate all the activities of the place; but I can sum it up by saying that all the work of the place is carried by the student body and its teachers. We hire no outside help. We build our own shelter, lay the brick, build the chimneys, the foundations, and the cement walks; raise the food, cook it, manufacture it for the market; train cooks for schools and cafeterias and send them out to open up establishments of their own. The only vegetarian cafeterias in the Southern Union Conference are conducted by Madison educated people; the same is true of city treatment rooms and rural sanitariums, of which there are three in this Union Conference.
The method of school work which makes possible the large amount of manual activity and the thorough class-work, and at the same time enables students to make their way by work, is known as the one-study plan, a scheme comparatively new when Madison first adopted it, but gradually coming into favor in various educational institutions, especially with those working on the "project scheme" of education.
Another vital factor in the success of a school that offers students an opportunity to work their way lies in the fact that Madison serves meals for practically one-fifth the cost of the same meals in a city. This is made possible by the School's co-operative method of operation and a low wage scale. According to our plan, each teacher stands at the head of some industrial department and likewise each industrial head is a teacher. Our students are not able to discern between the classwork and the industries, for equal stress is laid upon both.
Building Up a Faculty— Madison has 25 faculty members and commissioned workers, most of whom have been educated in the institution. One of the big problems in such a school is to secure competent teachers, educated, as most of our teachers are, in a co-operative, self supporting institution. Men of recognized intellectual ability lack when it comes to the teaching of industries and the heading of industrial departments; and on the other hand, men apt in hand crafts are often most deficient in the class-room. For these reasons Madison has been obliged to train its own faculty members. Then aside from the intellectual ability required and the manual skill necessary, there is a mental attitude toward self supporting work that is necessary to the success of this work. For teachers to donate to the upbuilding of the institution and charity work a sum equal to their own salary, calls for a devotion to the work in hand. Our faculty, however, did that very thing. They gave in the form of free treatments to our own people and others; in the help to city mission work and to the general extension work of self-supporting schools over $500 that they knew otherwise would come to them as salary. That is one way of expressing co-operation.
The medical work of Madison as represented by the Sanitarium is a factor of no small importance in the training of workers. Students come in contact with the outside world in a way that helps them build character and which is better for them than to remain wholly with our own people. At Madison practically every one has a nurse's training or the elements of that training in our courses in simple treatments, accidents and emergencies, etc. We are also following the plan of teaching men to cook and women to use tools.
In sending out workers, Madison has felt that its students could do an excellent rural work, breaking down prejudice and sowing seeds of truth where our regular workers have not the time to spend. The medical phase of rural work has proven a great strength. Seven small sanitariums have been operated as a result of the standard set by Madison. I think of one, considered the best hospital in the county, that made a decided impression on a city 28 miles distant. In another place a single nurse trained at Madison, and the young woman she trained, conducted rural treatment rooms for a dozen patients during the summer season, averaging $250 per week, or $1,000 per month. Our students recognize in the medical missionary training one of the most powerful methods of reaching human hearts.
City Treatment Rooms and Cafeterias—During the past two years city work has been developing. Ordinarily the wage problem stunts our city efforts. But self-supporting workers are willing to work for what they can make. Three city treatment rooms have been opened by students trained to co-operate in the matter of a wage. Equipment is simple, and yet people are pleased. Sick people care more for kind hearts and skillful hands than for elaborate equipment and fine furnishings. We have demonstrated the teachings of the Spirit of Prophecy on this point.
Since our last report Madison has taken over the food factory formerly located at Edgefield Junction, the laundry has been enlarged, a sanitarium cottage has been built, and Kinne Hall, the students' dining quarters, has been enlarged. The family is very much crowded and it is necessary to continue building.
The young people of the School are active along missionary lines, such as neighborhood Sunday school work, and other meetings; raising money to assist other rural centers, in reading course work, and so forth.
With its all-year program it is difficult for Madison to send canvassers into the field during the summer, but the school promises to release for the canvassing field one student for every one sent in from the field to fill his place during his absence. It is Madison's effort and ambition to uphold and strengthen the Conference work by sending out well-trained workers who, in counsel with the Conference committee, locate in some needy field, and also by strengthening local church activities. Our workers become active members of the local church in the cities where they locate as cafeteria or treatment-room workers or of the rural church near their schools or developed around the school.
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