Collection › LCMS Convention Proceedings (St. Louis, Missouri) › 1935 · 36th Convention, Cleveland › Page 85
LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1935, Page 85

Scan: The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod
Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

Ev. Luth. Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States. 1935. 85

D. What the Proposed Plan Requires.

1) An integrated and articulated curriculum for the entire minis-
terial training.

“Integration” indicates that the curriculum is a whole, one course cor-
related with the other, and that all courses are directed to one focal point

“Articulation” denotes the unity which is to be established between the
various stages of the courses, so that the upper courses are built directly on
the lower. (See Year-book of the National Society for the Study of Education,
1926, Vol. I.)

Your Committee has conscientiously and thoroughly studied the question
whether a six-year cultural training is sufficient under present conditions.
After projecting the appended provisional curriculum, your Committee became
convinced that six years of preparatory training under an integrated and
articulated curriculum and four years of theological studies, definitely inte-
grated and correlated with the work of the preparatory schools, will adequately
meet our educational requirements. Your Committee’s proposal of a pre-
theological year at the Seminary implies more than a realinement of courses.
True, New Testament Greek and Hebrew are removed from the junior colleges,
and certain courses must be transferred from the upper level to the lower level
of the Seminary. The proposed curriculum, however, requires the careful
analysis of all courses and a thoroughgoing study of methods. Some courses
may have to be omitted or reduced, some must be “speeded up,” some expanded
and rebuilt, and some added. Your Committee’s curriculum for the junior
college is designed to provide a broad cultural training and also specializa-
tion and therefore will impart adequate Biblical knowledge, develop Christian
character and Lutheran consciousness, and give a broad cultural background,
life enrichment, a proper understanding of the present scientific outlook and
of the social, political, and economic institutions, without restricting time and
opportunity for a thorough linguistic training. Your Committee desired to
present a curriculum which would enable our schools to develop not mere “in-
tellectuals,” but Christian gentlemen, trained to serve as consecrated pastors
and efficient church-leaders.

The proposed unified curriculum is built on two basic principles: —

a) A carefully planned, well-defined, and integrated progression from one
class to the next and from one level to the next must be observed. The formal,
strictly informational, and factual training must practically be completed in
the high school. The collegiate level (Prima and Secunda) will orient the
student in the humanities through the medium of languages and other tools
acquired in the high school and stress survey courses in the natural and social
sciences, combined with much directed self-activity. Thus the way is to be
prepared for professional study at the seminary, the student having been led

“yon der Uebersicht zur EBinsicht.”

b) The entire curriculum must have a definite focal point, to wit, religion,
around which all courses shall be grouped and integrated. The emphasis on
languages wil] make this somewhat difficult in the high-school level. In the
junior college, however, the emphasis is laid upon the humanities and upon
the social and natural sciences, and these will readily be focalized from the
viewpoint of religion.