# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1941_S142
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

140 Elementary Education

Number of children from non-Lutheran homes during these
three years: 8,463, 8,660, and 8,843.

The losses in number of schools and enrolment are in part
due to laws in Brazil requiring native-born teachers. Note that
the total number of instructors (last column) has increased, which
means more teaching positions or inner expansion.

Your Board has endeavored at all times to expand our paro-
chial-school system, and a great deal of its time is devoted directly
io problems connected with the parish-school. Your Board is pub-
lishing the News Service (now in its eighteenth year) and has
xecently enlarged its circle of usefulness by inviting pastors and
teachers and particularly the laymen to subscribe.

The Secretary of Schools visited -sixteen District boards of
education and has corresponded regularly with others. He has
teen engaged in introducing an effective working program whereby
the respective District boards will work jointly with the Circuit
‘Visitors in dealing systematically with all congregations and
awhereby all agencies of education are given their proper con-
sideration and every effort is made to establish Christian schools.
In the interest of the school the Secretary spent from two to six
weeks on three major trips. On these trips he made contacts with
the District boards and officials, conferences of pastors and teachers,
individual congregations, and local boards of education. He also
delivered many addresses and conference papers in various parts
of Synod. Such personal contacts of the school office with the
pastors, teachers, and laymen are of great value in making our
people education-minded and help to unify pastors and congrega-
tions in the important work of Christian education. We hope that
more frequent visits to various sections of Synod will be made in
the future and will become a means of encouraging the establish-
ment of more schools. This will most likely be possible, since
Mr. Wm. A: Kramer has been permanently called as assistant to the
Secretary. ;

However, the major part of school promotion is, after all,
carried on by the Secretary and his assistant in the office. They
must solve many problems for the men in the field, render assistance
of all kinds; plan procedures; write articles for various publica-
tions; make studies for the Board; prepare papers for conferences;
consider promotional plans, and the like. The men in the school
office also prepare, or assist in preparing, literature, books, courses;
they examine numerous text-books and professional books, the
latest publications, manuscripts, and so- on. They try to remain
informed on the latest developments in the educational field, read
and index many periodicals, and, in general, carry out the varied
details of office routine.