# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1877_S17
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 17 —

not use it? To be sure, the seminaries cannot do it alone; there must also be students. And there are still many synods in which hardly anyone can be found who is willing to be trained as a teacher. That should improve.

When some people give as a reason for not sending their children to the parish school [*Gemeindeſchule*] that they learn too little English, the reply is that we should of course take very earnest care that our young teachers also become competent in English, but that the reason is nevertheless not tenable. First we should seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all this will be added to us. One should also not overrate the performance of the public schools. Often the parish schools achieve just as much or more even in English. Providing good English teachers should be especially the task of the English districts. Among the Germans it is often hard to bring the seminarians far enough that they are competent in this respect, because they often understand no English at all before they enter the seminary. If they are weakly gifted in general, it is impossible for them to reach the desirable goal in English under such circumstances. But then they are usually only mediocre in the other subjects too. We can no longer content ourselves with small gifts. The times are different, the demands have grown higher. Therefore in prospective seminarians, besides godliness, a good measure of natural gifts must also be found.

A further main reason that should drive us to establish parish schools is also the mission that we can carry on through them among the children of those who do not belong to our church. Experience teaches that many such children can be won and also remain faithful after confirmation, while unfortunately some of the children from the congregation fall away. The proportion is probably little different in the two classes. Therefore a congregation must be willing to let it cost something to establish schools, and also not demand higher tuition from non-members. So we can carry on a great mission work and win the parents themselves through the children. It can be expected that we shall meet a joyful readiness to meet us with many for such mission work, since the dreadful fruits of the public-school system, the wildness and unruliness of the youth, appear ever more dreadful and are already noticed with horror by American school people, though these have no remedy against them. We can also point our church members to such conditions if they should perhaps be tempted to send their children to the public schools.

That Christian parents, moreover, should not send their children to foreign schools is attested by Georg Mylius, professor of theology at Wittenberg, who died in 1607, when he writes:

"Churches and schools belong together, and if the church