Letter from A. W. Spalding to L. K. Dickson,
General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

May, 1953

Dear Brother Dickson:

You may sometime find the leisure and inclination to read this letter. It is with the deepest sympathy and desire to cooperate that I greet the coming of you brethren—you, Professor Cossentine, and Elder Bradley—to Southern Missionary College, with the avowed purpose of consulting with the faculty over the broad problems of Christian Education. Your few words with me after your initial talk, as well as your public utterances, reveal the consciousness of deep wound in our educational body, the heart of all our cause, and of the necessity of a radical cure if a solution is to be found.

The faculty are invited to discuss with you freely the causes of the malady, the effects of which are seen in spiritual lethargy, false and injurious attitudes, and lack of power to finish God’s work. I have contemplated entering into the public discussion; but if I should speak out my heart in surveying the causes and suggesting the remedy, it would take an unconscionable length of time, and moreover would, as I reflect, be impolitic and unwise. It would run counter to typical lines of thinking among our educators, and if it were received as having any value and weight, would tend at this juncture to confuse students and perhaps teachers, and would arouse controversy. The area of reform, as I conceive it, goes so deep into our philosophy and practice as to point to complete revolution in our denominational policies of education, a revolution made necessary because we have previously revolved so far to the left that our backs are turned upon our pattern.

I have no conceit of being the instructor of our leaders, of whose ability and sincerity (speaking generally) I have no doubt. I am but a little one in our ranks, without the prestige and the learning that would qualify a counselor of weight. Yet my mind is so burdened with the state of our educational work that when I tell myself to keep silence and divorce myself from all sense of responsibility, I cannot rest or sleep. And this letter is begun at midnight because of that fact.

I have had the privilege of long connection with and experience in our educational work, both in and out of our schools; and I have through all this half century and more been a student of the educational principles and structure and processes which God has given us through the instrumentality of Ellen G. White. I have perceived in her writings not merely aphoristic maxims to grace dissertations on religion and learning; but rather a deeply conceived, well integrated system of education, embracing philosophy, range, form, content, method, and above all spirit. These writings constitute a blueprint which, also, our history shows has been little read, less understood, not at all comprehended. Our departure from it has been a consequence of this lack of perception and will to follow. The best compendium of this wealth of educational wisdom is the book, Education. It is supplemented by various other works, such as Counsels to Teachers, Fundamentals of Christian Education, The Ministry of Healing, and various other works on particular phases, including especially the educational department in Testimonies, Vol. 6.

I am therefore moved to record briefly my convictions of the deep-seated causes of the spiritual poverty and confusion among our workers and our people, stemming chiefly from our schools. Being advanced in years, I may not live to see even the beginning of the reform; for if it comes—and come it must before this people is ready to meet the Lord Jesus—it involves so radical and consummate an overturning that, except in the inscrutable miracles of God, it cannot be accomplished in a day. But I desire to leave to my children at least and to whomever will heed, a testament of my faith and vision. No reform can be adequate and effective except as it goes to the root of the malady. Little doses and patches of remedies, treating symptoms and scratches, are as inadequate and futile as they are blind. They are but healing “the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly.” The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is not destroyed by rejecting one or a few wormy specimens. The tree must be rejected; we must turn to the Tree of Life. For brevity’s sake, in the points I make following, I cite as authority only one directive from the Spirit of Prophecy; in most cases there is abundance of testimony besides.

Twenty-five years ago, in 1928, we came to our educational Kadesh-barnea. The Promised Land was before us, but the majority of our spies brought back an evil report. Discouraged at the report of the giants and the walled cities, we turned away from the commands of the Lord, and rejected His instructions not to seek our education in the universities, the schools of the world. (Fundamentals of Christian Education, 347, 359, 451, 567-474). The true higher education lies in the study of God’s revealed knowledge and wisdom. Ibid; Education 14. There were a few Calebs and Joshuas there, but their voices were drowned by the clamors of the multitude. We voted for affiliation and accreditation, with all that it involved of affinity with the world’s education.

The result of a generation of training in postgraduate work in the schools of the world is the molding of our educational institutions and curricula after the pattern there set before us or, if not there born, at least strengthened. If we had instead turned to an intensive study and faithful following of the Spirit of Prophecy, with our minds enlightened by the Holy Spirit, we would now be so far ahead of the world in our ideals and demonstrations, that we should be the head, not the tail, walking in chains in the train or our captors. If that characterization seems unjustified, if they cannot see it for a fact, let me ask, what can be expected when we turn our backs upon God’s directions? Are they inconsequential? Can they be explained away? Do we suffer no retribution for our disregard and disobedience? So reasoned Israel through its tortuous history of disloyalty and idolatry, till, as the Chronicler says, “there was no remedy.”

I have been challenged by some officials to tell how we can meet the difficulties, the legal obstructions to our operation as individuals or institutions, without conforming to the regulations of the accrediting agencies and the laws of the states, and therefore to the education afforded by the universities. I do not know; no man knows. But when Israel came up to the Red Sea and to the Jordan in its flood, no man-made devices, no counsels of the worldly-wise, could save them from the Egyptians or enable them to enter the Promised Land. And this I know from my study of the Testimonies on education, that the blueprint of the Christian education given us sets forth the truest, the most serviceable, the wisest, the grandest system of education ever proposed, so far superior to the systems of the world as to outshine them as the sun outshines the candle. If this seems extravagant, it is only to those whom the candle has enthralled and who have not seen the light of the sun.

To many it seems ridiculous to charge our schools with fault in curriculum or method. They point to the improvements and supposed improvements, in libraries, laboratories, techniques, and affiliations, and to the more scientific methods in teaching, which are or which seem to be the fruit of cooperation with the world. Would we counsel a return to the innocent days of Mary Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the other? Would we reduce our faculties of masters and doctors to the status of unschooled teachers like Uriah Smith, Stephen Haskell, and Goodloe Bell? It does not follow that taking heed to the Testimonies would reduce our teaching bodies to the state of ignoramuses and imbeciles. And the men who were scorned because they had no degree were yet men of wisdom and skill and ability. G. H. Bell, though he had no scholastic degree, was the one man in these early times who perceived the vision vouchsafed by the Lord to His unschooled servant, Ellen G. White, and who sought with all his ingenuity and power to put the principles into operation. He was rejected as leader in favor of a university-trained man who later in life confessed to me that he had then been, in his own words, “an educated fool.” And the culmination of the policy gave us an Alexander McLearn, who put Battle Creek College out of operation for a whole year. We learn little, and we learn slowly.

Who can read, with mind enlightened by the Holy Spirit, that central masterpiece of Sister White’s, the book Education, and not perceive the deep wisdom, the all-embracing science of the education God has offered to us? We have never really studied, nor practiced, nor sought to attain what that book teaches. To those who could have been instructed and enlightened by study of the Testimonies, there would have been no need of the spur of accrediting associations or statute laws to inspire improvement of our facilities and methods. We were asleep, but we needed no wine of Babylon to inflame us; we need the fruit of the Tree of Life.

The closer affinity we make with the schools of the world, the farther we depart from the presence of God. To read the first article in Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 6, in the section, “Education,” “The Need of Educational Reform,” is to feel a dagger struck into our educational policies. Are we receiving the mark of the beast and his image, or the seal of God? Page 130.

Yet our schools are infinitely better than the schools of the world. They are “cities of refuge” for our youth. The principles of our faith have had much effect upon our lives and our policies. Slighted and neglected though they have been in great degree, yet their impact upon our lives has been considerable. In our schools there are observed and inculcated correct principles of social behaviour, diet and health, avoidance of narcotics, studiousness, reverence and devotion which have greater or less effect upon the students.

And the high moral character of our teachers in general, their varying degrees of devotion and consecration, their perception of spiritual values, have a most telling effect upon students. Would that it were greater, but thank God for what it is. Many teachers who have taken their post-graduate work in schools of the world yet number among them men of deep piety and whole-souled consecration. They may be Moseses needing only the wilderness experience.

Nevertheless there is not perfection. The little elevation above the world to which we have attained, morally, is not the high mark set before us by God. Even in the days of Ahab, the impact of the diluted worship of Jehovah had such an effect upon the rulers that their reputation in the world was high: “The kings of Israel are merciful kings.” But that did not make Ahab a man of God, nor remove Jezebel’s influence. Elijah and Elisha have yet a work to do for us.

“We need now to begin over again. Reforms must be entered into with heart, and soul, and will. …If there is not in some respects an education of an altogether different character from that which has been carried on in some of our schools, we need not have gone to the expense of purchasing lands and erecting school-buildings.” (Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 6, p. 142). I was a student in Battle Creek College at the time that was written; I am a teacher now. My scholastic life spans the years; and I testify that the need of reforms is greater now than it was then. For we have retrograded. We say we are different from the world’s schools—because we teach the Bible. But other church schools teach Bible too; the question is, How true is the Teaching? Minds that turn from the light of God in any phase or any respect are dim in perception of the spirit of Bible truth. The truth of God goes deeper than a creed. Doctrine is the framework of truth, but without the life it becomes a stark skeleton.

But so subtle is the influence which has made us depart from the divine blueprint that it is imperceptible to those involved, and like Malachi’s people, they ask in injured innocence: “Wherein have we departed from the blueprint? Give us specific instances.”

I will cite five areas of disharmony with the word of God in educational theories and practices in our schools. They are only a few examples of disobedience; there are others, as for instance, the social structure and code, agriculture as the ABC of educational effort; industries, ostentation in place of simplicity, the character of entertainment, preoccupation with things of the flesh and the world. If all our variances from the blueprint are not the product of participation with the world, they are in any case fostered by contact with and participation in the ideals and methods received in the world’s schools. Ahaz did not need to go to Damascus to prove his disloyalty; but when he went, he brought back the heathen altar and put it in the house of God. I will now list the five transgressions:

1. Incentive, motivation. In our first meeting here, discussion turned for a time upon unlovely and even scandalous self-urge of workers to be recognized as great men, to covet position and authority, to engage in rivalry for honor and lordship. The question was timidly raised whether the school policy of clothing students with responsibility and bestowing honors and emolument upon them was responsible for inculcating this spirit. The problem goes much deeper than that. Developing youth need to be judiciously accorded increasing responsibility; but what is the incentive offered to work and organize and improve?—that is the determining factor in whether that social and managerial education is beneficial or injurious.

The world’s chief incentive is competition, rivalry. I could write a treatise upon the nature and ramifications of this selfish urge; that I have done in my book, Who Is the Greatest? It deserves study. Both the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy condemn rivalry (and competition, its genesis) as the motivation of the Christian. Mark 10:42-45. (Education, pp. 225, 226).

The Christian incentive is unselfish love, the love of Christ, cooperation, ministry. We acknowledge this, but we mingle with, and often let become dominant the incentive of competition. We honor the temple and offer sacrifices there, because it is beautiful and gives us prestige; but we keep the high places also, and bow down before the images of Baal and Astarte. In what? In our class incentives, with marks and gradings and prizes and special honors, in our social life, in our recreations, and ultimately in the professional life of our students when they leave school and enter the work of God. We stage contests and give rewards and prizes for the winners. And this is so common and time honored a practice that we stare in amazement if it is challenged. To the end of Israel and Judah, save for the spasmodic reforms of Josiah, the high places remained and were considered to be, in a degree, a part of the worship of Jehovah. We are repeating the history. But the incentive and the worship place of the Christian is not competition, rivalry, but the pure urge of love, the love of God.

Adoption of the Christian incentive of love, when it is studied in all its aspects and applications, would revolutionize our system and our lives, and produce men and women who know the spirit of Christ, who buried Himself in the furrow of the world’s need, that He might bring forth more fruit. Until the policy and practice of our schools is reversed, we shall continue to turn out self-centered, egotistic, arrogant young workers. There will, of course, be exceptions, in the degree that the love of God works secretly in the life of this and that young man and woman. But what is the responsibility of the school? The spirit of rivalry may begin in the home, it certainly exists in the community which helps to mold the early character, it may be and usually is in the church; but our schools instead of correcting it, foster it. The college is the last opportunity for reform; and the college is not performing its function.

2. Literature. Despite clear and explicit instruction in the Testimonies (Education, pp. 226, 227), a great volume indeed of instruction upon the evil of subjecting our students to the influence of pagan authors, our courses in literature continue to present such writers and to enforce their study. Some teachers of English seem unable to distinguish between the good and the evil in literature, except the extremes. From Homer to Shakespeare and such modern pygmies as Walt Whitman, they induct their students into pagan and neo-pagan masses of crime, blood, obscenity, and blasphemy. That there are cases of beauty and probity in all these authors is true; the Devil clothes his progeny in purple and gold. But the waters of purity are fouled in puddles of mud. Our study of literature should be selective, as professor Bell demonstrated, and not comprehensive, as all worldly concepts of the study of literature dictate. Our objective in education must be, not to reach the level and copy the ways of the schools of the world; but rather to adjudge the needs of the church in its particular work. What Christian education aims at is character building; what the church and the world need is “young men and young women … fit to stand at the head of their families. But such an education is not to be acquired by the study of heathen classics.” (Ministry of Healing, p. 444).

The laws of the accrediting associations may be given as an excuse for continuing this transgression of the divine will. How pitiful the excuse in the eyes of God and in view of the characters being formed in our youth. But as I discovered when teaching literature, those laws are not so inflexible. Unless teachers have acquired an appetite for the fleshpots of Egypt, they are not bound by any rigid laws to feed from them. The teaching of such classic filth and evil, perversely, defeats its own objective, by lowering the taste of students and leading them to indulge in the poorest types of fiction and sports news and comics. By such means, even the teaching of Biblical literature as a school study is rendered distasteful, and along with uninspired teaching adds to the aversion of students for the Scriptures. What are we doing to our prospective ministers and teachers?

3. Recreation. The instruction of the Spirit of Prophecy upon recreation is constructive and not merely negative. Education, pp. 207-222. But it is sufficiently explicit in condemning competitive sports to be definitive in this field; and all the fallacious reasoning the “change of venue,” falls so short of conviction that, in the end, there comes to be only the bold and open-faced defiance of the instruction, as being unrealistic and oppressive. Counsels to Teachers, p. 350 ff. There was a time, forty to fifty years ago, when competitive sports were banished from nearly all, if not all of our colleges. But they have come back with force, and their adoption is increasing. Teachers seem unable to meet, constructively or even defensively, the headlong demand of students for sports. And the reason again is that we have failed to study and follow and develop the instruction of the Testimonies of God’s Spirit.

There is such an inspiration, such a healthy recreation, combined with science and growing appreciation, in the study of nature and in its activities, from hiking to gardening, such a wealth of wisdom, the wisdom of God’s word, to be garnered from its use, as far outstrips the trivial and debasing rewards of sports. On the other hand, there is no greater ally of the evil incentive of rivalry than the competitive sports. And this stronghold of the devil is one of the hardest to take. I do not believe in harshly removing sports from the life of the school, without substituting true recreation in their place. And this cannot be done suddenly and arbitrarily. The substitution must be a growth, not a displacement. There should be built up such an experience, such a delight and enthusiasm for the things of God’s creation as would displace naturally the urge in rivalry in athletic games. This is a tremendous task and opportunity for our teachers and our schools. Unless it is realized, we shall forever be hanging on the precipice of disloyalty and loss.

4. Nature study and occupation. There are many studies foisted upon our students which are relatively unimportant, and which crowd the program so tightly as to forbid the inclusion of neglected but more important studies. I cite nature study as an example. God has three books: the Bible, nature and history. He made the creation to be His first book, to convey to us His thoughts. Later, because of sin, He gave the Bible, which illumines and interprets both nature and history. The study of nature—not merely to know its mechanism, but to explore God’s thoughts—is a vital part of Christian education, and this the Testimonies reveal and emphasize. But who among us is able to read and to teach the word of God from nature? The opening direction of the Three Angels’ Messages, our text, is ignored; for we cannot know the God who created unless we know His creation.

The natural sciences are, generally speaking, taught as dry skeletonized subjects—names, orders, laws, classifications; and to many students who take them as an aid in getting their degrees, they are an utter bore. This is not opening the works of God to students. Nor can the science of reading God’s word be gotten in the schools of the world. It can only be obtained through combination of the study of nature, Bible, and Testimonies. This is not to ignore the findings of science and the vast store of knowledge which, admittedly, are to be found in the schools of the world and the teachers in them, as well as of scientists and savants outside the school. But this knowledge can be gained without … our actual enrollment in them; and such knowledge is to be screened through the truths revealed to us by God himself. If any men are to be trusted to the clutch of the universities, they should be carefully selected men, not an indiscriminate mob of youth intent upon grabbing higher degrees; and we must realize that even in making such selections and recommendations, we are running the risk of sacrificing some portion of our precious heritage.

But we are not including the study of God’s creation in any adequate or perspicacious way in our colleges. (I except certain cases, where men of learning and consecration have made shining marks as true teachers.)

Recently a theological student, bright and enterprising, asked me, “How do you find God’s word in nature? I go outdoors and sit in the midst of things; I see, but I do not get any heavenly message. How do you learn to read God’s thoughts in nature?”

I said: “A good way to start is to follow the counsel on page 120 of Education to compare Bible with nature.”

“Why I didn’t know there was anything in Education about nature,” he said.

“Have you read the book?”

“Yes, three times, once in a course. But I don’t remember there is anything about nature in it.”!!!

We have located our college in the midst of God’s beautiful handiwork, but the eyes and ears of our students are kept so grindingly on their scholastic tasks and extracurricular duties, and there is such a paucity of invigorating leadership in the things of God revealed in nature, that not one in ten students has either a knowledge of or an interest in nature study. Yet, “On the lily’s petals God has written a message for you—written in language that your heart can read only as it unlearns the lessons of distrust and selfishness and corroding care.” (Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing, p. 109 [old edition, p. 143]).

5. Parent Education. We started our educational edifice at the top, with a college. We were nearly a quarter of a century late in instituting elementary education. We have never applied ourselves to laying the foundation, the pre-school education of the child. Yet all this is laid out for us in the Testimonies, and it is told us that the early years are the most determinative in the education of the individual. Counsels to Teachers, p. 107. The earliest counsels on education were devoted to the home life and the training which parents should give their children. (Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 3, p. 131, ff.) Very specific outlines of instruction were laid out, and the instruction, (far anticipatory of scientific findings) was given that until a child is eight or ten years of age, his only school should be the home and his only teachers the parents. (Counsels to Teachers, pp. 79, 80, 107). But this presupposes the competency of the parents as teachers. (Id., p. 108). Fatuously, disingenuously, perversely, this statement has been taken by many educators and administrators to excuse them from any participation in this program: “Let the parents do it.”

But parents have received no training from the church’s schools for their assumption of the role as teachers. What knowledge and ability any of them may have has been inherited from their parents or picked up by casual reading or chance instruction. Seldom is this most important branch of study organized, integrated, complete. The church in its educational system has had no place for this. Yet the church is directed to give that education to parents. (Education, pp. 275, 276). There should be instruction given to all students in college, and probably in the academy, in the duties, privileges, and responsibilities of home life and parenthood. (Ministry of Healing, p. 444).

The deplorable state of our Seventh-day Adventist homes—not, doubtless averaging worse than the homes of the world, yet not superior in general and in numberless instances most sickening—is attributable to the gross neglect of the church’s educational program. Not only should students be trained for marriage and parenthood, but teachers especially training for the teaching of parents and the instituting of demonstration preschools, should be prepared to go into our churches whether old or new, and likewise into non-Adventist communities, and give a thorough Christian training to parents and children. Especially should this instruction be given to our prospective ministers and their wives.

Yet our college boards shrink from and choose to ignore this basic need. Intent upon economics, their minds falter before the assumed and probable cost. There is money for magnificent buildings of science, for ornate temples of worship, for everything but the foundation work of education, the training of parents for the preschool education of their children.

Seventeen years after she had effected the institution of the elementary church school work, Sister White said to me of the training of parents: “This is the most important work before us as a people and we have not begun to touch it with the tips of our fingers.” Forty years ago and we have not even yet begun to touch it with the tips of our fingers. How shall we lift the level of piety and power in the church while we neglect the very foundation of our educational work? “If the foundations be destroyed, what shall the righteous do?”

Even this world is rapidly forging ahead of us, of us who had the light and instruction seventy-five years ago. We are at the tag end of educational progress, when we should be at the head. Schools of the world, from high schools to universities, are formulating policies and instituting means for education in home life and training. We cannot depend upon the universities and teachers’ colleges to give our teachers this training. While we may gather from their findings and experience much of value to us, we cannot afford to subject our preschool teachers to their classes; for so much of error is mingled with the truth. All that we get from them, by reading and by consultation, must be screened through the sacred instruction given us by God. When will our authorities awake to the vital and pressing necessity and act? (Testimonies for the Church, Vol 6, p. 196).

Never, for all our alarms and challenges and calls to repentance and prayer and revival efforts, never shall we effect a reform, till we go to the roots of the matter, face up as Christian men to the stark facts, repent of our folly and indifference and neglect, and turn with all our heart to God whose work we are expected to finish in this generation. Joshua 7:10-13.

May the Lord so direct and control us that our colleges shall become more like God’s schools of the prophets than like Rome’s College of the Propaganda. Here lies our only hope of being the instrument in

God’s hands to finish His work, rather than being rejected and cast off as were His chosen people the Jews.

Sincerely,
A. W. Spalding

While agriculture may or may not be useful for a vocation, I believe all students should be involved in agriculture during their education.

And while this country has not held or maybe bypassed agriculture as important (meaning pay for farmers), producing food is the foundation of a country's economy. Which may be why it's quite controlled and heading towards a low percentage industrialization monopoly.

Recently I heard that farming as an occupation is below 1 percent in North America. That is a serious issue, I agree. I come from a Saskatchewan farming family of seven uncles. One of the last of my uncles to retire from farming and who still lives on the farm last I heard confessed to me that in deciding what crops to plant, etc, he put too much stock in what his neighbors were doing. That's a lot of the problem with farmers and leads to city migration. We could learn a lot from the Amish, Mennonites, and German Baptists. If we were to limit our outlays for machinery and not shy away from the hard work that God has prescribed for us, we'd enjoy a much more wholesome lifestyle like they do.

Five years ago I was invited to a fairly large German Baptist wedding (German Baptists are similar to the Amish) and it was simply beautiful. I've never met such a healthy, happy, wholesome group in my entire life.