Mission school

“ Consequently, the health of the children in mission schools has often suffered, and the work of the school been hindered. In one school something approaching to a revolution was produced by the constant care and attention of a doctor. ”

“ In addition to the lack of sufficient public schools, there are reasons involved in the former religious control of the islands which make the Mission school most essential in bringing to the citizens of to-morrow quickening ideals and constructive training. ”

“ Their desire to push forward their mission work will only be increased by the rude log churches, benches that tip uneasily, shuttered holes in the walls, and dearth of Sunday-school papers, books and Bibles. The needs of their people are becoming more and more plain to them as they observe the methods and efforts used for themselves at this school, and the example set causes them to use some efforts for the benefit of others. They draw their pupils with them on their return here. The pestilence of last summer kept from us an overflow of students whom our next term will see filling our rooms. ”

“ As we turn to study the need for Mission Schools, and their place as an educative force, it is well that we should seek to realize something of the splendid achievements of our public schools as well as where they seriously fail. ”

“ Unless the first missionaries had established schools, the people must have grown up ignorant, and the translation of the Scriptures would have been utterly useless, as none would have been able to read them. School work has therefore been carried on at all our stations, and in connexion with almost all our village churches, and some of the best work that has been done in the mission has been done in the schools, where the minds and memories of the children have been charged with Gospel truth, which was able to make them wise unto salvation. ”

“ That number in schools through the East, just as your Association proposes, sending them into your mission schools, where they may learn right from our life by comparison with theirs, by daily contact, will be found to be the most rapid plan. Make them work, and do not forget to make them fill their places, which they will gladly do when they find they must. ”

“ Look in upon a single mission station. A group of three buildings attracts our attention as a bit of New England transplanted, a church, a good-sized school-house, and between the two a neat white painted cottage. The missionaries number four, of whom three are ladies from the North. Over 200 children and youth come daily to the school, where these missionary teachers instruct in branches usual in primary to grammar grades, and also in Christian morals and manners, with the Bible for [18] a text-book, seeking earnestly to develop heart, mind and body to honor and righteousness. ”

“ We have been building up our Elgins—the Fisk, the Howard, the Straight, Atlanta, Talladega, Tougaloo, and Berea. They are furnishing us their approved mechanism. This correlation of the school work to the church work is after the wisdom of all successful missionary enterprise in foreign lands. In India the American Board tried the experiment of dispensing with the school process, only to put the mission back for years.
4. Another advantage is that by their slower growth, we can the more completely assimilate and mold the material of our churches. ”

“ The common school is as much a necessity in mission fields, as it is that the people should be able to read the Word of God; and it has everywhere been a primary object of attention; but always, and more especially of late years, with the aim and expectation, that it will speedily derive its support from the parents of the children.
Properly conducted, the tendency of the common school is to development. Teachers are learning all the while; new branches of study are introduced; there is greater thoroughness in the teaching and discipline ”

“ The compulsory attendance of all the children from 6 to 18 years of age in school, mostly in boarding-schools, has closed the mission day-school, and the native worker has become preacher and pastor and no longer a school teacher. Ten years ago the work of our native workers could be closely planned by the white missionary, but to-day he must plan his own work largely to fit ever changing conditions, and learn to make each day count most for Christ. ”

“ It is a statement well within the facts that nine out of ten of the colored schools of all grades in the South are taught by those who had their training in these mission schools, or else by [Pg 77] teachers who owe their education to those of their own race who were so trained. No more powerful or far-reaching influence was ever set in operation than that which had its origin in the cabin where taught the first humble missionary among the people freed by the war. ”

“ Their eminent success is said to have been based upon their invariably laying down a solid educational foundation, and securing the careful training of the scholars who flocked to them. To each mission were attached a public school, in which Christian doctrine, literature, and ecclesiastical and secular music were taught, and wherever unusual capacity was evinced, the missionaries gathered those boys together in their own houses, and there instructed them how to make mental prayer, to practise virtue, to avoid and overcome sin, and excite the spirit of penance. ”

“ This report shows what hard work can do in the face of discouraging circumstances, and it is also a very clear illustration of the way in which Christian educational work, when wisely conducted, is a valuable assistance to mission work.
So successful and promising a work must needs have permanent mission premises in which to carry it on. Simultaneously with this educational and evangelistic work, our pioneer missionary there had also to undertake the worry of purchasing land, and building a school-chapel, similar to the one at Mandalay. ”

“ A theological class of Indian young men, supported wholly by mission funds, may be trained in the vernacular at any missionary school supported in whole or in part by missionary societies, the object being to prepare them for the ministry, whose subsequent work shall be confined to preaching, unless they are employed as teachers in remote settlements where English schools are inaccessible. ”

“ The alternative is the loss of influence over a class that may be expected to take the lead in all movements of their people, and their transfer to teachers who are, in many cases, the avowed and bitter foes of Christianity, and whose object will be to imbue them with their own sentiments. There is abundant testimony to the fact that the pupils of mission schools regard missionaries with a friendly feeling, and diffuse that feeling in their respective circles, and also show respect for the Gospel even when they argue against it to justify their adherence to their ancestral religion. ”

“ The pupils of this school are excluded from the public schools because of their age, and because they are necessarily occupied through the day. In it also will be sheltered the vigorous mission Sunday-school which Pastor Blakesley’s church has sustained, and which will be under charge of Mr. ”

“ In this glance at our schools, we see Christian schools. But they are more, they are missionary schools. We are bearing the torch of Christ into places of darkness. We teach the industries to them because they can be made tributary to the salvation of the people. They are the leaves of the tree of life, and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the people.
We may not close this review of our school system without remembering those institutions now standing alone ”

“ The American Missionary Association has ninety-four schools, and in most of these more women than men are engaged. It is the duty of the missionary teacher to avail herself of every opportunity which her relation with her scholars affords, either in day or [399] boarding school, to inculcate Christian truth, to warn against the evils which she finds common among the people, to teach by example and precept the living Word, as manifested in the life of Christ. ”

“ They think of the work of educational missionaries as necessarily bound up with schools and institutions. A teacher without a school, or outside a school, seems to them rather like a gunner without a gun. ”

“ Give them schools and pure and enlightened churches and they will awake into new life as fast as any people ever did. They will show in years what missionary work can usually show only in decades. In Williamsburg Academy, Ky., nearly every boy in the higher classes is expecting to prepare for the ministry, and that school is only a little over half a dozen years old and is the first one opened in our mountain work. ”

“ It is not always easy for the missionary suddenly to introduce changes of method and practice, and many a missionary school which is infinitely superior to the native institution might shock an American school superintendent beyond recovery. ”

“ With our eye fixed steadily on our missionary work, enough who cannot attain to the Christian ministry will become teachers, and they, catching the spirit of the institution, will become missionary teachers. It is surprising to see how this spirit has taken possession of our pupils. There is scarcely one who goes into the country to teach who does not organize his Sabbath-school as promptly as his day-school, and pursue it with even more interest. ”

“ The colored people, though the majority of them are unlettered men, seek for Christian teachers—even in our common public schools—as a general thing.
The mission work carried on by the theological students is still full of interest, and promises a bright future for the many thousands who are being brought to a knowledge of the truth. The students of the college go out into all parts of the State and teach day and Sunday-schools, and by so doing exert a Christian influence over their pupils. ”

“ This fact is a trumpet call to us to press the work of the Association in its schools and colleges and churches with renewed vigor and devotion.
And we would especially emphasize the necessity of preserving the unity of the educational and religious work of the Association to this end. Every teacher must be a missionary as truly as every preacher. And this unity of purpose and effort must be felt. Church and school, as in the past, must continue to stand together in the minds and labors of the people that there may be no exaltation of education at the expense of religion. ”

“ Missionaries were appointed to preach, and to teach day-schools, and assistants, both male and female, were sent out; from 3,000 to 5,000 pupils were taught yearly, until about 1872, when the secular or day-school system was given up, and efforts concentrated on permanent or higher institutions, some of which had been planted in 1865. ”

“ It is obvious that as missionary societies lay weight on one or the other of these objects, they will support a different kind of school. If their object is the first, they will seek to educate the orphan and the waif, and the school and the orphanage will be, as they are in the Roman Catholic body, intimately joined together. If the object is to edify the Christian body and to provide it with a suitable pastor, the missionary body will erect primary schools for Christian children and theological and normal schools to complete their school system. ”

“ It is from country places like these that we wish to bring scholars into the school. The truth is that the young people in these communities are too ignorant to have any desire for anything different from what they now have. Here is an almost limitless home missionary field, to be worked by the graduates of our schools. ”

“ I love more and more the freedom and fraternity I find, and I believe in the church, which makes so much of schools, and has educated so many of my people.”
Said another: “The church must go with the school, because education alone only sharpens the mind for greater mischief. In the very nature of things, every school teacher ought to be a true Christian, to exert a Christ-like influence in the school, to encourage pupils to attend church and Sunday-school. The teacher’s power is greater over scholars here than in the North.” ”

“ Besides these, we have in the South thirty-seven which we class as [pg 308] common schools. Eight of these are graded, with two or three teachers each. Nearly all are parochial schools. The teachers are in both the day schools and the Sunday-schools, and are not only school teachers, but church missionaries. They train the young of our congregations for greater usefulness, encourage many of the most promising to go to higher institutions, teach the parents better ideas of home life, and lead all ages to a more intelligent and spiritual worship. ”

“ As the church sent out the school in the early days to become one of its greatest contributors to our national life, so ever since, the church has earnestly sought to supply the neglected with that knowledge which is power.
It is increasingly the aim of the schools founded and maintained by Home Missions to lead to self-realization and self-help, to bring the Christ motive to the inner life, and efficiency and effectiveness to the mastery of outward circumstances through the training of minds and hands. ”

“ It is possible to build an organisation too narrow at the base and too heavy at the top, and then to fill the higher schools with non-Christian pupils without any definite understanding of the way in which that practice is to serve the main purpose of the mission. ”