# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1950_S1024
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

326 SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES

time. Some of the advocates of change, however, propose the elimi="3
nation, or at least the curtailment, of our present high school de- 3
partments. We are strongly opposed to this departure from our
century-old tradition, for reasons stated in the following para-
graphs. %
2. Our present pre-theological schools (high school through”
junior college) have kept abreast of the best in modern Americait::
pre-professional education and have long ceased to be copies 0!
19th-century European Gymnasia. 4
3. The ministry which our schools have produced in the past
has acquitted itself creditably and measured up to the needs of thi
hour, the outgoing generation of bilingual pulpit men, for instance, g
having been the admiration and envy of many in their several com %
munities. Graduates of our colleges have done distinguished wor!
at secular universities; some received recognition reflecting high
honor upon the synodical schools in which they had been trained.
4. The high schools which Synod maintains, with six subje

to every four of the public high schools, are an indispensable +
tegral part of Synod’s system of education and offer the studen
a broad, well-integrated, intensified preparation for work in th
college department.
5. The dropping of the high school would mean, in most areag

of Synod, a lull of four years in Christian education between con
firmation and college entrance. Yet during these very years char-
acter will be molded, molded according to textbook and nondescript
convictions of the high school teacher — without the all-important
influence of religion. 7
6. After such a lull in religious training, the diversity of ou!
look and attitude in such a college student body, made up of high
school graduates from all parts of the land and from all types of %
schools, in the sophisticated age, and without a thorough religio
education and training, would present new and grave proble
7. Synod, in recent years, has found much reason to rejoice be-%
cause growing numbers of our Christian people are seeing thes
dangers which threaten their children’s faith during the high
school years and are making great sacrifices to establish Christian
high schools wherever feasible. It would be a cause of offense
those very people if Synod dropped its high schools for minister
training, schools which have existed 30, 50, 70, a hundred years,
8. We can understand that parents would like to keep. thelg:
boys at home and under parental care during the years of ad
lescence. However, this influence is limited. For this is the “ga
age,” and boys are now strongly influenced by their associates. 1
influence of evil associates during this period is often greater thay}