# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1944_S470
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

470 Report of Board for Higher Education _

Implications
These changes in Springfield’s ‘organization, course offerings, a
student body carry with them a number of serious implications: i
1. Entirely apart from future development, the Springfield Sem
nary at the present moment, perhaps involuntarily, but ney.
theless quite definitely, encourages an undesirable trend in ov
ministerial training by virtue of its acceptance of 18- or (19
-year-old students who are graduates of public high schools. ;
The alarming extent to which young men attempt to by-pass the
training in our own Preparatory schools is indicated by the Spring
field Seminary’s report to the synodical convention of 1941: ‘Dr
ing recent years, and that without any solicitation or effort on ou
Part, such high school graduates have been applying for admission i bee
increasing numbers at our Springfield Concordia. During the last
three years we have had from forty to fifty applications each year
and during the last three years we enrolled about thirty :of such:
students each year. If the matter of financial support had not sto
‘in the way, the number might have been considerably larger’

(Proceedings, Thirty-eighth Regular Convention, Fort Wayne, Ind
1941, page 42.)

g numbers of young men are remainin,
at home to complete two, three, or four years of public high scho
training, and then enter our Preparatory colleges to become pasto
This is a very natural, but, on the whole, an undesirable trend. E
trance into Springfield at the end of high school, rather than entranc
into the three-year special college courses provided at séveral prepar
tory colleges, is more attractive to many young men because th
Springfield course is shorter, easier, and cheaper than the St. Lo
course, and because: no discrimination is shown—and rightfully so-—=
in placing candidates from the two seminaries. Me

2. The tendency of large areas of modern Protestantism to elimissag
Rate the ancient languages from theological training and tos
replace them primarily with social studies is. well kno
Youth itself exhibits a very definite antipathy toward La in
‘Greek, and Hebrew. The Springfield curriculum by reason 0
its short courses in languages offers a far greater appeal t
many young men than the St. Louis course. This condition ‘i
noticeable at the preparatory schools. At one preparatory in
Stitution 75 per cent of the graduating class in no uncertai
terms expressed their desire to enter Springfield rather than
St. Louis for these very reasons ;

The maintenance of Springfield presents Synod with a dua
system of theological training, if not in ‘extensive reality at’ the
moment, then in well-developed embryonic form, with .t
Probability that future years will see the full developmen

two contrasting types of training—the one, academic, scholar

%

3.