# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1916_S88
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

88 Proceedings of the twenty-sixth convention

school is held in rented premises. The rent costs us monthly between $75 and $80. For teachers' salaries $1170 a month was spent in 1915. The salary of the women teachers is $25 a month. During the summer vacation, which lasts three to four months, the women teachers draw no salary.

Because of their good achievements, as well as the good discipline and the religious instruction, our schools enjoy a high reputation. Children walk past the public school to the mission school two to three miles away. Even sect preachers send their children to our schools. The children learn the catechism and the Bible stories gladly and well. To our question: "What is the best thing that you learn here in your school?" the answer came promptly from almost all the children in all the schools: "The Catechism" — "Bible History" — "God's Word." Only a little squirt in Greenville, who shortly before our visit had been moved up into the First Reader, answered: [Printed in English.] "The First Reader!" The children learn the catechism, as said, well too. There was in the country school at Sandy Ridge the little, pitch-black, seven-year-old Ora Gräber. She wore a plain but clean calico dress and went barefoot. In her short, frizzy hair was a big, colorful hair ribbon. With folded hands she stood devoutly there and recited almost without a stumble the whole Small Catechism from memory. Even the Christian Questions [*Chriſtliche Frageſtücke*, the questions for communicants appended to the Small Catechism] this seven-year-old Negro child knew by heart. Our hearts laughed within us. That the Negro children also like to sing and sing well hardly needs to be said. And they sing by preference our Lutheran core hymns translated into English, such as "Ach bleib mit deiner Gnade bei uns, HErr JEſu Chriſt" [Lord Jesus Christ, with Us Abide], "Liebſter JEſu, wir ſind hier, dich und dein Wort anzuhören" [Dearest Jesus, We Are Here], "Laß mich dein ſein und bleiben, du treuer Gott und HErr" [Let me be thine and remain, thou faithful God and Lord] and others. In the school at Fayetteville there was a shortage of hymnals; seven boys sang there out of one book. Three sat on a bench meant for two; the middle one held the hymnal. Behind them sat three more boys, who looked into the same hymnal over the shoulders of those in front, and on the bench in front of them sat a little boy who almost twisted his neck in order to sing along out of the book too. It was a real delight to hear the clear, powerful singing of the black children.

To gain a closer insight into our schools, your commission had a school census taken last December. It was the first attempt of this kind and is therefore not satisfactory in all respects. 29 out of 31 schools reported a total enrollment of 2047. As regards the church affiliation of the parents, 190 pupils have a Lutheran father and a Lutheran mother, 57 pupils have either a Lutheran or a non-Lutheran mother or a Lutheran or non-Lutheran father, 1507 have non-Lutheran parents, and the parents of 152 children