Southern Adventist University - Triangle Yearbook (Collegedale, TN)

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Educated Behavior A Message from President Thompson To be worth much to an individual or nation, education must be Christian. hHorace Mann stated that a human being is not, in any proper sense, a human being till he is educated. Character development should be the great, if not the sole, aim of education. As Ruskin has said, ' Edu- cation doe3 not mean teaching people to know what they do not know,- it means teaching them to behave as they do not behave. It is difficult to conceive of a code of moral conduct or of a pattern of character education not found in the life and teachings of Jesus, and set forth in the hHoly Scriptures. In Jjpan my attention was called to the literacy of the people, which much more than equals the literacy of western nations. The rescript regarding education issued by the Emperor of Japan m 1872 said in part, It is designed henceforth that education shall be so diffused that there may not be a village with an ignorant family, nor a family with an ignorant member. Who is able to disprove that out of this ideal has sprung the new Japan? And because the education has been non-Christian, Japan today is a menace to the peace of the Orient, and the scientific barbarity of her rape of uneducated China shocks the world. To be worth much, there must be more to education than rationality and sheer intellectuality. I have just made a study of one thousand years of education — from 500 B. C. to 500 A. D. — when human learning and the rich flowering of genius were at their apex among the Greeks. Butthese did not prove either sufficient or lasting, and disappeared. The golden age in education, culture, and artistic development gave rise to a grotesque mythology and to a crude religion. In our age we have seen that nation which gave the world the Protestant Reformation and developed the most renowned universities, which became the mecca of advanced scholars and research men of all lands — the nation which in the arts, in science, and in music led the world — captured by a neopaganism which, making might right, plunged the v orld twenty-four years ago into its worst baptism of blood since the dawn of time, and which today is dedicated to a program of racial persecution, of international rapine, aggrandizement, and conquest. In a recent major declaration of American foreign policy, with the world for his radio audience, Secretary of State hHull made repeated, grim references to international anarchy based on brute force, international lawlessness on the rampage, and relapses into bar- barism. Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan each had its renaissance; each has its culture and learning,- each its schools and universities. In each country the Christian element in education is either wholly lacking, has been badly distorted, or has entirely disappeared. Any philosophy or system of education which trains the mind but not the spirit, only makes man a more efficient instrument of evil. Character building must be the goal of education. More than two thousand years ago, a wise man said: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.

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5101 S367 A12 1938 (SDA) Ckcol CHO Here ' s to our Southern Junior, Here ' s to our S. J. C. Here ' s to our dear old College, Growing each year you see; Loyal we ' ll be for aye, then. Both students old and new. Here ' s to our Southern Junior, Always we ' re true to you! 4 S 6 4 8

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In appreciation of his splendid leadership, of his sympathetic understanding of young people, and manifest confidence in them, we dedicate this work to our president — J. C. Thompson.