Chapter Nine—Schools and Foreign Missions Begin

A large publishing work and a large medical work are not the only distinguishing marks of the Advent Movement, marks stamped there indelibly by the counsels of Mrs. White. Seventh-day Adventists have a distinctive educational work. Our first college was opened only about a decade after we organized the General Conference. That first college, located in Battle Creek, Michigan, was the start of our whole educational system that now encircles the world. Today, our youth in many areas can go all the way through from the first grade to the sixteenth, and from there on through graduate study, in a Seventh-day Adventist school. But who was the guiding spirit in this educational program? And who spoke out directly, clearly, and at length, on the kind of schools Adventists ought to have in order to justify a separate school system? The answer is, Mrs. White.WBEGW 60.1

There are few today who know that we had hardly more than launched the Battle Creek College than we had to close it for a time. Why? Because the one placed in charge of it quickly revealed that his purpose was to make it simply one more school of learning, a school whose main objective would be to compete with secular institutions. If there had not been Mrs. White’s firm voice to speak out, our school system might quickly have destroyed itself or at least destroyed any justification for its existence.WBEGW 60.2

Down through the years she wrote on true education—education of body, mind, and spirit. That writing came to full flower in her book Education, published in 1903. There she set forth certain principles of education that today are finally receiving endorsement from authorities in the field of education. Let us cite one specific illustration. She spoke out against the idea of requiring children of very tender years to spend long hours in a schoolroom focusing on endless books.WBEGW 61.1

Today there are eminent educators who echo this thought and who declare that if children begin school a little later, when both body and nervous system are more mature and stable, they will quickly acquire what other children have been endeavoring to secure over a period of years.WBEGW 61.2