# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1900_S12
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

12 Proceedings of the eighteenth convention

do not know how to bring up and teach children; for they themselves have learned nothing except to provide for the belly, and it takes special people to bring up and teach the children well and rightly. Third, even if the parents were fit and gladly wished to do it themselves, they have, because of other business and housekeeping, neither time nor room for it, so that necessity compels the keeping of common tutors for the children, unless each one would keep his own; but that would be too heavy for the common man, and many a fine boy would again be neglected for the sake of poverty. Besides, many parents die and leave orphans behind them; and how these are cared for by guardians, even if experience were too little for us, ought surely to show us, that God himself calls himself the Father of the orphans, Ps. 68:6, as of those who are otherwise forsaken by everyone. Also there are some who have no children; these take no interest in it for that reason." (St. Louis Edition, X, 466.)

2.

If it is established that the family under the present civic and social conditions is not in a position to carry out the education of the children as it should be done, that the need, therefore, of making education at least in part a common concern of the congregation is very widespread, then one rightly looks about for an arrangement that meets this need. The second thesis deals with those existing arrangements from which we must look away. It reads:

Under conditions here, the state school cannot by any means satisfy that need; but neither do the Sunday school and confirmation instruction fully answer it.

The state school is named in the first place because, under conditions here, it cannot really come into question at all for Christian education. Between the state school here and the state school in Germany there is, to be sure, a tremendous difference. When members of congregations appeal to the fact that they received Christian instruction in the state school in Germany, and therefore think that the state school ought to suffice here also, this rests on ignorance of the conditions. The German state school is indeed supposed to be a Christian school, a school of religion, and is so at least in theory. It owes its origin actually to our Father Luther. When he, in his writing to the councilmen of the German cities and in other writings, calls for the founding of schools, he has in mind precisely Christian schools, established and maintained by the state. Luther was well aware that the school maintained by the state is an emergency measure. For