EDUCATION, RELIGIOUS
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
—Proverbs 22:6
1344 Christian Schools Enrollments
Enrollments in full-time Protestant schools rose 20% from 2,992,000 to 3,000,000 in 1976. Full-time Catholic schools went down 38% from 5.6 million in 1966 to 3.5 million in 1976. Full-time Jewish school enrollment went up 37% from 60,000 in 1966 to 82,000 in 1976.
1345 Bible School Enrollment is Up
In the 1970s the number of students in secular universities fell by 14%, but for Bible colleges it jumped 7.5%.
1346 Comparative Instructional Hours
It is said that Protestant boys and girls receive 52 hours of religious instruction a year; Jewish boys and girls receive 248 hours of religious instruction a year and Roman Catholic receive 305 hours a year. Due to tardiness, untrained Sunday school teachers, absences, poor lesson materials and surroundings it is said that even the 52 hours of instruction actually only average about 17 hours per year.
1347 Graham Not Planning College
Vero Beach, Florida (EP)—Believing that the role of educator would be “a great diversion from my preaching and worldwide crusade,” Dr. Billy Graham said he has dropped plans to build any type of educational institution at this time.
“I have given serious consideration over the past five years to building a Christian university,” he said in the interview with Associated Press reporters. “Twenty-two cities over the nation have offered property and finances for the school.”
The evangelist, who discussed a fifty-million-dollar interdenominational world university for more than a year, visited Palm Beach County last September to view a thousand-acre site in Palm Beach Gardens. It was offered by John D. MacArthur, millionaire developer, to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
—Gospel Herald
1348 Letting Children Free to Develop?
Coleridge was once talking with a man who told him that he did not believe in giving little children any religious instruction whatsoever. His theory was that the child’s mind should not be prejudiced in any direction, but when he came to years of discretion he should be permitted to choose his religious opinions for himself.
Coleridge said nothing; but after a while he asked his visitor if he would like to see his garden. The man said he would, and Coleridge took him out into the garden, where only weeds were growing. The man looked at Coleridge in surprise, and said, “Why this is not a garden! There is nothing but weeds here!”
“Well, you see,” answered Coleridge, “I did not wish to infringe upon the liberty of the garden in any way, I was just giving the garden a chance to express itself and to choose its own production.”
1349 Christian Colleges Needed
No parent would expect his young son or daughter to physically compete with a professional athlete on the athletic field, yet we ask our Christian youth to do exactly that in the intellectual arena. That is, during their formative, immature years we expect them to contend successfully with an antithetical academic and philosophical system manned by college-trained professionals and then to emerge at the end of twelve years with their faith and their beliefs intact.
As early as 1941 Walter Lippman said:
“Day after day young people are subjected to the bombardment of naturalism with all of its animosity to Christianity. In the formative years of their lives, or at least during the period of their education when their ideas are crystallizing, they must listen and absorb these ideas of man, the world and religion. With these facts before them, why do Protestants wonder that Christianity has so little influence over young people!”
1350 Missionaries In Education
Missionaries not only introduced Christian education to the nations where they labored but introduced modern, scientific education as well. This is true in black Africa where almost every national leader alive today has been trained in a mission school. It is also true in such nations as India, China, and Japan. Forty- four percent of the North American missionary force is involved in some way in education.
—Bible Expositor
1351 Epigram On Education (Religious)
• A knowledge of the Bible without a college course is more valuable than a college course without the Bible.
—William Lyon Phelps
• If we work upon marble, it will perish; if on brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumple into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds, and imbue them with principles, with the just fear of God and love of our fellow men, we engrave on those tablets something that will brighten to all eternity.
—Daniel Webster
See also: Children ; Sunday School.