# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1947_S243
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES 241

isterial and teacher training, which traditionally provides for com-
pletely integrated education from the beginning of the high school
level through Junior College and Seminary, has been one of the
real elements of strength in the program of the Church. This
system should not, in our opinion, be lightly abandoned.

On the other hand, there has been a constantly increasing
sentiment and demand for the opening of all the Preparatory
Schools for general education. Of the ten Preparatory Colleges,
all but three have been authorized by Synod to develop various
projects in general education. Of the remaining schools, one has
general education enrollments of slightly less than 30 per cent;
at the remaining two schools, general education students approxi~
mate 10 per cent of the total enrollment. All of the schools except
one have repeatedly urged that they be authorized to offer a
general education program because their constituency desires, and
would be served by, such a project.

There have also been additional requests for co-education.
It is the considered opinion of your Board that the interests of
neither the Church nor of the students involved are best served
by co-education at schools which offer physical facilities not de-
signed for the purpose and educational programs unsuited to the
cause. Both of these basic deficiencies exist where girls are ac-
cepted by synodical schools which are not in a position to make
very extensive adjustments in both categories mentioned. Nor
does it seem wise or helpful in any event to establish conditions
in which girls of high school age leave home to live in dormitories
on campuses which also provide dormitory housing for boys at
the Junior College level.

Approximately half of all students now studying in Synod’s
Preparatory Schools (including the present Fort Wayne arrange-
ment) are general education students. While there is hope of
again establishing a program of exclusive concentration upon the
Objectives of Ministerial Training in the proposed Senior College,
it is not realistic to believe that most of the Preparatory Schools
could be restored to this condition without involving the undesir-
able reactions detailed in your Board’s report on the Senior Col-
lege problem. ‘

In those schools in which general education students have been
accepted under conditions which in effect make them a part of the
existing program, there has been a continued emphasis on the
spiritual training of all students, and the specific objectives of the
pre-theological course have been attained to a reasonable degree
on the basis of the synodically approved curriculum. Restriction
of non-ministerial enrollment has been found necessary only to

Proceedings, 1947 16