# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1878_S27
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 27 —

...is accomplished is still something considerable, though it must be
admitted that certain demands are not thereby satisfied. This is
especially true with regard to our congregations in the East. As
recently as a decade ago the demands were set lower, because at that
time the English district schools offered far less that was tempting
than is the case today. We have had to witness a whole number of
congregational schools outside our synodical body go under, simply
because they had no teachers able to meet the demands placed on them
regarding English. If we do not want our schools, especially in the
East, to be swallowed up by the English district schools, we must have
teachers especially skilled in English. The first generation was still
willing to accept that their children received no complete education
in English; but this now-growing generation demands that its offspring
learn to read and write English correctly in our schools — in short,
that they acquire a thoroughly correct manner of expression. How can
these demands now be met? Never and by no means through our teachers'
seminary, so long as it is bound by circumstances that do not permit
it to accomplish what such demands require, even if our dear
professors were able to achieve a still higher standard of English
education in their students than heretofore. To accomplish what is
demanded, a three-year seminary course would be necessary, and, for
the time thereby created, a dedicated English professorship as well. A
more than ordinary level of preparatory education should also be
required as a condition of admission to the institution. From the
latter, however, we must for the time being refrain, if we do not
want to seriously harm the institution. One can also refrain from it
and still meet the demands made, if a three-year seminary course is
established and a dedicated English professorship founded for it. For,
for the time being, one will not be able to avoid admitting into the
institution young, gifted men who, at the time of their entry, can
hardly write a single sentence with correct spelling — unless one
wishes straightaway to block off the very sources that fill our
seminary with its blessing. As soon as a boy has been confirmed, his
admission to our seminary is sought. Where are parents from rural
congregations [*Landgemeinden*] supposed to obtain a higher preparatory
education for their children? No opportunity for it is offered to
them. The pastors of such congregations mostly lack the necessary
time, even if they otherwise had the desire and inclination for it.
Dissatisfied that their children must still wait longer for such
preparation, they place them — even if, in their own view, only for
the time being — into a trade, and in most cases the children are
lost to us. And then, above all, as regards musical preparation! There
it is as a rule simply impossible for them to receive any. All this we
must reckon with. Now consider what

[SCAN: in "Landgemeinden" ("Woher sollen Eltern aus Landgemeinden …") the middle sorts "ein" are damaged or failed to ink; the word is read from the context as "Landgemeinden". A defect in the printing, not in the scan.]