# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1947_S165
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES ' 165

d. The presidents must cultivate a balanced and sympathetic
interest in the operation and the spirit of all aspects of the
total conditioning influence upon the student, and must
assiduously avoid unbalanced preoccupation with the purely
curricular and the obvious instructional means for attaining
certain objectives. It is important also that they exercise
considerable restraint upon pressures for the increase of
the stature of their schools in the eyes of the secular world
and its agencies. There is some need of a fearless acknowl-
edgment of the truth that it is not particularly important
what the world thinks of our schools, but that it is supremely
important what God thinks of them.

e. It is most important that all presidents form rather detached
judgments, unaffected by the prevailing pressures for growth
and expansion, of the optimum school-size at which the
necessary delegation of administrative responsibility can
be achieved without excessive cost and at which the normal
span of effective presidential control, as here conceived,
will not be unduly exceeded. It is likely that an unbiased
judgment will yield an estimate much smaller than the goals
toward which the indicated plans of some of our schools
appear to be leading.

f, The presidents must have a considerably more influential
voice in the selection of members of their instructional staffs;
and this will demand a modification of the traditional scheme
of the electoral boards. The present arrangement rests on
assumptions, some of which are completely unsupported
by experience and may even be at variance with a soundly
Christian view of education.

2. Teachers

A planned and adequately organized effort to achieve the
objectives here proposed for Synod’s ministerial schools clearly
would require some reorientation of instructional viewpoint and
a conscious redirection of a portion of instructional effort. It is of
considerable importance to recognize in this connection that vague-
ness often characterizes the teacher’s view of his function.
Experienced observation can scarcely avoid the conclusion that
teachers are not immune to the danger of forming and pursuing
notions of purpose which may leave much to be desired in relation
to the true needs of their students. For this two explanations may
be advanced: (1) limited training, specifically for teaching, and
(2) excéssive preoccupation with the content of special fields of
study, often encouraged by the tradition that the chief if not the
sole objective of a school is knowledge.