BEGINNINGS AT BATTLE CREEK

The first little schools  

A new school at Battle Creek  

The battle for classical education  

The two methods contrasted  

HOW OTHER SCHOOLS BEGAN

Two new colleges  

South Lancaster Academy  

Healdsburg College  

Union College  

Avondale College  

Seven other schools  

The foundations of our educational work were laid amid successes and failures. But learning the stories of what happened back then provides us with extremely important lessons, so we today can avoid the mistakes and learn from the successes.

The educational work of our denomination began with home schools, in which one or several families would have someone teach their children in a home. To our knowledge, the first church school began in 1853 at Bucks Bridge, New York, and was taught by Martha Byington (later Mrs. George Amadon).

Back in those days, if any young man approached James White seeking ministerial training, James told him to read some books and start preaching.

The first appeal for Seventh-day Adventist schools of which there is record is found in a Review editorial, written by James White: What can be done for our children? There is no use in concealing the fact that but a small portion of the children of Sabbathkeepers are forming characters for eternal life in the kingdom of God. Lessons in Denominational History, p. 176; quoting Review, August 20, 1857.

One day in 1867, young Edson White (18 at the time) looked out a window of the Review building in Battle Creek and saw a man chopping wood and tossing it on a woodpile. The thought came to go out and meet him. Edson found him to be a poor man trying to recover his health at the Sanitarium.

That man was Goodloe Harper Bell (1832-1899); he told Edson of his eager desire to start a school. Young Edson asked him if, in his spare time, he would teach him and some other young men grammar. That humble beginning was the start of Bells educational career in the denomination.

With Edsons encouragement, a year later Bell opened a select school in Battle Creek. Edson and William White (Ellen's sons) were among his first students. Another teenager, young John Harvey Kellogg, also attended.

The school was held upstairs in a rickety building. Although the students wondered if they would fall through the floor, that never seemed to happen.

Goodloe Bell was a kindly, but strict, teacher. In later years, all his students recognized he had been a good friend and excellent instructor.

Five years later, in 1872, the situation changed. That spring, the Whites met with the church to consider starting a denominational church school in Battle Creek. It was decided to adopt Bells school.

When it opened that fall, there were so many students that Bell had to teach a morning class for some and an evening class for those who worked days at the Review.

In March 1873, the General Conference Session, encouraged by James and Ellen White, voted to form an Educational Society; $54,000 in cash, or pledges, was raised by the end of the year.

Ellen White wept when they rejected her advice to purchase a 40-acre former fairgrounds, outside Battle Creek, for the school; and, instead, they purchased a 12-acre estate in the city, near the Western Health Reform Institute. In 1874 a three-story building was erected. They had decided to make it a city school. During construction, part of the acreage was sold to help pay expenses, reducing it to 7 acres.

The Foster farm near Goguac Lake, five miles from town, was their [the Whites] first choice, with a forty-acre tract--the old fairgrounds coming second. Either of these locations would have offered ample acreage for vocational training. However, in December 1873, while the Whites were in the West, the church leaders purchased the Erastus Hussey estate of twelve acres on Washington Avenue in Battle Creek, directly opposite the Sanitarium. It is reported that when Mrs. White heard of the action, she wept bitterly. Merlin Neff, For God and CME, p. 59.

Years later, P.T. Magan wrote to a church leader who was a faithful supporter of our educational blueprint:

If our people had wholeheartedly set themselves at the time to carry out Gods simple plan of education, we might now be in a very different position than we are today. But our leaders, to a very great extent, urged the selling of land attached to the schools and doing away with a large amount of our physical work. This has been true at Walla Walla, Union College, and Washington Missionary College at Takoma Park. It has also been true in other places in a smaller degree. You have felt pained and saddened at all of this, and my personal belief is that you have honestly done your best to stem the tide. But as I see it, you have not been able to put your ideas across with our educators generally anymore than E.A. Sutherland and I in earlier days.--Percy T. Magan, letter to Warren Howell, January 13, 1926.

Goodloe Bell was solid for Spirit of Prophecy principles and a strong advocate of vocational training, which he also highly recommended. Not once did he ever deviate from them. Not only were the students to learn book knowledge, but also how to work at various skills and trades. However, it bothered some people that Goodloe Bell tended to be strict and, worse, that he had no degrees. Bell had studied in Oberlin College (headed by the revivalist, Charles Finney), was well-educated, and firmly believed that vocational work should be included in the curriculum. But Bell had not graduated from any school.

Since there has been controversy about Bells work at Battle Creek, it should be mentioned that an outstanding biography of Goodloe Harper Bell and his teaching methods can be found in Appendix A (pp. 267-275) of Vande Veres book, The Wisdom Seekers.

When [G.R.] Avery left Battle Creek after spending parts of three years in the college, he felt convinced that in Bell he had met a noble man--an adult a young fellow could enjoy as a lasting friend.

One of Averys contemporaries, Drury Webster Reavis, reflects in a memoir on Bell and his stern bent. Professor Bell was the most complete, all-around teacher of order and general decorum I ever met. Reavis suggests that he acted thus because severe discipline was necessary if reforms were to be achieved, for some were so calloused in their ways that a mere hint or suggestion was not sufficient to work any change in them. Reavis probably gets closer to the explanation, however, when he describes the rough, tough school groups a teacher had to battle in raw Michigan at the time.--E.K. Vande Vere, The Wisdom Seekers, p. 270.

So, in 1875, Sidney Brownsburger, fresh from the University of Michigan, was elected president. Goodloe Bell was placed in charge of the English Department and Uriah Smith became the Bible teacher.

But, Brownsburger believed in a classical (liberal arts) curriculum; he demanded that only that be taught. For example, in 1877-1878, some of the students were taking the classical courses (Latin, Greek, mathematics, natural science, rhetoric, elocution, and geology). There was an almost complete lack of Bible courses. Only a few were required to attend Uriah Smiths Bible lectures.

Brownsburger . . taught a curriculum little different from that of other educational institutions. This was largely because Brownsburger, according to his own testimony, knew nothing about operating a program that included industries and farming.--Emmett K. Vande Vere, Adventism in America, Gary Land, ed., p. 70.

All the while Bell, along with Ellen White, continued to urge her plan of education; but Brownsburger would have nothing to do with it. Finally, in 1881, Brownsburger resigned. (It is of interest that, years later, Brownsburger accepted the blueprint. In 1909, he went to the South and helped establish the Asheville Agricultural School, near Fletcher, North Carolina.)

It was a difficult problem for the new school to adjust itself to the plan of education outlined by Mrs. White in 1872. The education of the day was classical, the main emphasis being placed on a knowledge of the classics, mathematics, ancient languages, philosophy, and certain sciences. Her message called for an education that would include practical training and character training. Just how to accomplish this baffled many of the early educators of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.--Lessons in Denominational History, p. 181.

Needing someone to head the school, the board still felt they could not put Bell in charge since he lacked that college degree. It just would not look good. So they found Alexander McLearn, someone else who had a classical degree. In 1881, the year of James Whites death, he was voted in as president of the school.

Immediately Goodloe Bell began agitating vocational training, as outlined in the Spirit of Prophecy. McLearn would hear nothing of it; and, soon, the entire college was divided over the issue. Uriah Smith, still the Bible teacher, sided with McLearn. Others sided with Bell.

Ellen White wrote a lengthy letter which she had read to the Battle Creek Church. You will find it in 5 Testimonies, pp. 45-84.

I am pained to find you, my much-esteemed brother, involved in this matter, on the wrong side, with those whom I know God is not leading.--EGW to Uriah Smith, March 28, 1882; 5 Testimonies, p. 45.

The controversy grew so severe that the college was closed for a year. McLearn, firm in his belief in the classics, not only left the college but the church as well.

The following statement by Bell clarifies his understanding of the Spirit of Prophecy blueprint:

The popular method of filling the students mind with that which is not practical and hurrying him through a certain course, in order that he may obtain a diploma, is not true education. True education begins on the inside, at the core, with that which is practical. It builds up and strengthens a symmetry of character that by and by, in this life, will show itself in some grand, good, and noble work for the world. The school at South Lancaster seeks to attain to this ideal.--G.H. Bell, Review December 26, 1882.

George I. Butler, president of the General Conference and chairman of the Battle Creek College Board during the height of that crisis, summed it up this way:

We can never have true success until the main object for which the college was created is kept constantly in view, and the spirit of true humility and the love of Christ actuates teachers and scholars. The spirit of pride and display and vanity and worldly success has been far too prominent. To make a show in graduating exercises, and in displaying diplomas, and to be called Professor, has with many been a great object.

We firmly believe if this institution had never been called a college, but had simply been a school of instruction, where our young people could come to learn things that would make them useful, and where they could learn Gods truth for this time, without any graduating exercises, diplomas, etc., that it would have accomplished far more good than it has, and it would have escaped some disasters it has experienced. The schools of our land are mostly conducted in a manner to generate pride and vanity.

More attention has been paid at times to fitting pupils for teachers in the public schools of the country than to prepare them for a place in the work of God. As a consequence we have sent out many of our brightest young people to follow the business of teaching [public] school . . but it would have been far better for this Cause and for them had many of these devoted themselves to the work of God.--G.I. Butler, Review, September 31, 1883.

Before continuing on with events at Battle Creek College, we want to briefly describe several other early schools which were formed in accordance with the blueprint. Some of them were started a decade or so later. But by placing them here, the historical development in the later sections of this book will not be interrupted. A brief overview of these schools helps us better understand the educational blueprint.

During the year that the Battle Creek school was closed (1882-1883), two new colleges opened: Healdsburg, California, with Brownsburger as president, and South Lancaster, Massachusetts, with Bell as its head. Would they follow the blueprint? In both instances, we find that adherence to the blueprint did not require great financial resources nor large buildings--but strong leadership and dedicated workers. Let us briefly consider each of these new schools.

At the strong urging of S.N. Haskell in a February 1882 meeting, the brethren in New England started South Lancaster Academy in April of that year. Although called an academy, it was actually a college-level institution. (In 1922, it was renamed Atlantic Union College.)

Haskell said that the object of the school was dual in nature: to train workers who could not only work for the church, but also support themselves. It has been thought by some that practical aims are inconsistent with true culture (Review, March 7, 1882) Goodloe Bell was called to head up the new school. Regarding Bell, Arthur W. Spalding made this statement:

Professor Bell was perhaps the most clear-sighted educator the denomination has ever known. He believed thoroughly in the system of Christian education which Mrs. White, divinely inspired, had already presented and he sought here [at AUC] to put it into operation.--Footprints of the Pioneers, p. 16.

The course of study Bell proposed included none of the classical studies, such as Greek, Latin, and Elocution. He outlined the course of study in a Review article:

The Course of Study will embrace English Language; Mathematics; Geography; Human Physiology and Hygiene; and Bible History; together with practical instruction in Tract and Missionary Work, and in the most useful of the Agricultural, Domestic and Mechanic Arts . . But of all studies, the Bible ranks highest . . A practical knowledge of the laws of health is all-important . . Pupils will be expected to take but few studies at a time, thereby mastering them the more rapidly.--Review, March 7, 1882.

The plan was for short courses of study, to quickly fit students to enter the work. After the close of school on the first day, when all met to discuss the situation, the students said they wanted to help construct the institution. Even though they had only received a brief introduction to the educational blueprint, they immediately asked for an acre of ground that they could cultivate, with the proceeds to be donated to the school.

Two articles in the Review (June 28 and August 15, 1882) explained that, instead of games and frivolous amusements each evening, the students had taken a special course in physiology. Manual labor was scheduled and required three hours each day (one hour after breakfast, one after dinner, and another at night). Students were paid according to the value of their work. The daily schedule required rising at 5 a.m. Study period ended at 9 p.m.; during this time, assistance from teachers was available.

There was a daily Bible class, evening worship, and weekly prayer meeting. Baptisms resulted. Students engaged in missionary projects, such as sending publications to non-believers, corresponding with interested persons, placing books in libraries, and corresponding with isolated believers.

The entire New England Conference was thrilled at the good progress that was being made at the new school.

By March 1884, aside from the gardening and housework, four trades were being taught and two more were in the planning stage.

By December, it was announced that six-month courses in canvassing, missionary work, and the giving of Bible readings (Bible studies) would begin in January. During the last three months of the 1884 spring term, intensive drill in missionary work was given to prepare students to engage in missionary work throughout the summer months.

In July 1884, Elder Haskell reported that during the two years of the schools existence, over 30 conversions had occurred.

In October 1881, at a camp meeting near Sacramento, Ellen White, W.C. White, J.N. Haskell, and J.H. Waggoner were present and urged that a school be started in California. About 12 weeks later, a site was located at Healdsburg, about 65 miles north of San Francisco Bay.

You will recall that no industries had been started at Battle Creek during its first eight years, under the leadership of Sidney Brownsburger. Although Ellen White had urged it, Brownsburger, a graduate of the University of Michigan, said he did not know how to operate such a school.

But, after leaving the headship of Battle Creek College in spring 1881, he became sick. While convalescing that summer, he declared that he recognized his error. (Perhaps he himself had previously overworked, without having obtained adequate exercise.) Arriving at Healdsburg that fall, he fully endorsed the blueprint program his associates arranged, even though he himself was still learning more about it. At the end of the first half of the first year, he wrote:

The commencement of this year has been one of unusual anxiety to many friends of the College. An untried field of responsibility was entered upon in uniting physical employment with mental labor, and every step in the development of this system was watched with intense interest . . Almost from the very first there had been a steadily increasing interest on the part of the students, in the practical workings of this new system, and I doubt that there is one of our number who would willingly return to the old method . . The students are hard at work at their various employments, and they are happy because they are faithful.--Brownsburger, Review, January 15, 1884.

The daily program was tailored to fit the new work system, as it was called, providing for three periods of labor each day. Each student had to work a total of two hours daily. The young men and boys were formed into five companies of five or six. Each group had a leader, and the different groups changed work after several weeks in order to give them a wider experience (ibid.). The faculty taught their academic classes and then went to work with the students.

The influence of manual labor upon the students department has been very wholesome and in no way has it impeded mental progress, but rather accelerated it.--Brownsburger, Signs, May 17, 1883.

Trades which were taught, included carpentry, printing, painting, shoemaking, blacksmithing, and tentmaking.

It should be noted that Healdsburg College had two problems: First, it was located on the edge of a town and did not have sufficient land (only 7 acres). Second, it eventually closed down due to later management which neither understood the blueprint nor managed finances properly.

Nevertheless, in its later career, as the result of some weak administrations alternating with the strong, the college deteriorated in morale and declined in the confidence of the people. Its industries perished, some of the buildings were closed, its student body became demoralized, till there was no remedy. A.W. Spalding, Christ's Last Legion, p. 63.

Begun in 1882, Healdsburg College closed its doors in June 1908. In September 1909, a new school began at Pacific Union College in Angwin.

It is of interest that, once he had taken hold of the educational blueprint, Brownsburger remained with it. In 1909, at the age of 64, he helped establish Asheville Agricultural School and Mountain Sanitarium near Fletcher, North Carolina.

We will not devote much space to Union College, founded 1891. From the beginning, it had a classical curriculum, with no work program, no industries, and no required Bible or religion courses. For the first five years, it was four schools in one, with separate bulletins, schedules, textbooks, and classes in English, German, Swedish, and Danish-Norwegian. In 1896, three other schools were started elsewhere in the central states; these specialized in each of the foreign languages. To induce it to locate there, the city of Lincoln, Nebraska, had given it 212 acres of land. It promptly sold all but 20 acres. Like many of our other colleges, for decades it has been surrounded by city.

When Ellen White went to Australia in December 1891, there were three colleges (Battle Creek, Healdsburg, and Union), and a fourth would begin the next year (Walla Walla). There were three academies (South Lancaster [actually college level]; Milton; and Portland, in Oregon). There was even a training school in Hamburg, Germany.

Yet, by 1891, there was still little evidence of blueprint education anywhere in the world. Arriving in Australia, Ellen White began encouraging the brethren to start a blueprint school.

Avondale was to be the model school of higher grade for all the Adventist world. It was to be marked with simplicity, industry, devotion, adherence to the pattern.--Spalding, Captains of the Host, p. 651.

The work in Australia (started only seven years earlier by S.N. Haskell; J.O. Corliss; and William Arnold, an experienced colporteur) was remarkably well-established by December 1891, when Ellen White, her son, and her staff arrived.

Because she had been urging that a school be established, about six months later in June 1892 two large houses were rented in Melbourne. The school was so successful that the following year a third building had to be rented. But Ellen White told the leaders that they must find a large acreage out in the country.

In April or May, they found the 1,450-acre Campbell Estate. It was located near the village of Cooranbong, 5 miles from the town of New Castle and 75 miles from the capital city, Sydney. The price was only $3.00 an acre. Two streams, one on each side of the estate, flowed into Dora Creek. Small steamboats could navigate the river from the ocean, about 14 miles away.

Influential critics were quick to declare the soil poor and the land worthless. But a startling development silenced their objections.

Before I visited Cooranbong, the Lord gave me a dream. In my dream I was taken to the land that was for sale in Cooranbong. Several of our brethren had been solicited to visit the land. I dreamed that, as I was walking about the estate, I came to a neat-cut furrow that had been plowed one quarter of a yard deep and two yards in length. Two of the brethren who had worked the rich soil of Iowa were standing before the furrow and saying, This is not good land; the soil is not favorable.

But One who has often spoken in counsel was present also, and He said, False witness had been borne of this land. He then described the properties of the different layers of the earth. He explained the science of the soil, and said that this land was adapted to the growth of fruit and vegetables, and that, if well worked, would produce its treasures for the benefit of man.

This dream I related to Brother and Sister Starr and my family. Afterwards as I was walking on the ground; lo, there was the furrow just as I had described it, and the men also who criticized the appearance of the land. The words were spoken just as I had dreamed.--Ellen White, quoted in F.C. Gilbert, Divine Predictions of Mrs. Ellen G. White Fulfilled, pp. 343-344.

On May 24, 1894, the party went there; and, discovering the furrow, some complained as they gazed upon it. Then they realized that there was no way the fresh furrow could have been placed there. The grass around it had been untouched in all directions. At this, Ellen and the others related the dream of several weeks earlier.

After an evening of earnest prayer, there was perfect unity in the decision to purchase the land for $4,500 especially after one of those who knelt with them in prayer was instantly healed of tuberculosis as Ellen White prayed (A.G. Daniells, Abiding Gift of Prophecy, p. 312).

In her dream, she had been told that if the land was plowed deeply, this would bring up the needed minerals and enrich the soil. When this was done, fruit trees, berries, and vegetables grew in abundance. Decades later, Daniells wrote:

Gods blessing rested signally upon the field and orchard at Avondale. I remember at one time, while connected with the school for a short period, I went into the vineyard, lifted up some of the heavy vines, and brought to view large bunches of the most luscious grapes I have ever seen. From the ten-acre orchard I have helped the boys carry to the school kitchen large baskets of peaches, oranges, lemons, and apples, as fine as could be grown.--A.G. Daniells, Abiding Gift of Prophecy, chap. 28.

(It should be noted here that, in the dream, the different layers of the soil at Avondale were shown to Ellen White. It is true that, looking at it from above, the soil appeared to be sandy and worthless. But she was told that there was rich dirt below that top layer, that only needed deep plowing to be brought up.)

The Healy Hotel in nearby Cooranbong was rented and the students and classes were housed there. By day, everyone worked on the property, clearing trees and draining the land. In the evening, classes were held in the hotel.

When two buildings on campus had been built and partly ready, the school opened on April 28, 1897.

All the while, Ellen White was assisting in planning the curriculum and writing letters to raise money. She made her home near the school, in a cottage she named Sunnyside, from 1895 to 1900.

A loan fund was set up in a trust, which would perpetually help needy students attend the school. They were expected to repay it as soon as they could after leaving the school. (At that time, about 25 cents a week would pay the tuition of one student.) Students were also expected to work during the summers, so they could partly meet their own expenses.

Every morning, someone would ring a hand-clapper bell, to wake everyone at 5:45 a.m. Classes were held in the morning; and, after lunch, the students spent three hours in labor.

About a mile west of the school was their hospital, which was used to treat the sick in the area and provide an entering wedge for the message.

Their first church was in a sawmill loft. Although the dissatisfied members talked about building a church, they did little about it--until one day when Ellen White told them a message she had received the night before. She was shown the prophet Haggai, calling on the Israelites to arouse and build the house of the Lord (Haggai 1:4-5, 8). Immediately, they set to work, raised the money, and built a church at Avondale.

Over a period of time, a number of industries were started, where the students could learn trades and pay their way through school. These included a dairy, bakery, orchard and farm, carpentry, and poultry. Although the original food factory was located on campus, in 1897 a separate facility was started in Melbourne. Over the years, profits have helped schools and mission projects.

Here is a summary of blueprint points, as given in two primary Spirit of Prophecy passages about Avondale:

Life Sketches, The Avondale School: The youth can never receive the proper training in any of our schools which are located near a city (LS 351:1-352:1). The schools should be out in nature, where the eye does not rest on the dwellings of men (LS 383:2). Manual occupation is vital (LS 353:2-355:1). School industries should be established (LS 355:1). Avondale should be a training ground for missionaries (LS 372:2-376:2).

6 Testimonies, The Avondale School Farm: Lots should not be sold to Adventists who want to build around the school; they should be located some distance from it. All the land around the school should be for the school farm (6T 181:2-3; 183:1-185:1). Teachers are needed for various lines, including industrial education. A hospital should be built. Orphans should be able to come here for an education. The students should help erect the buildings, and they should not be crowded close together (6T 182:1-183:0).

Think not that either manual labor by the students or industrial education was a novelty found only at a few of our early schools. Research reveals that many of our brethren were anxious to fulfill the blueprint back in those days: Washington Missionary College; Oakwood College; Graysville Academy (today called Southern Adventist University); Lodi Academy; Keene Academy (now Southwestern Adventist University); as well as overseas schools, such as Solusi in Rhodesia (modern Zimbabwe), were all originally blueprint schools. Many others could be mentioned. Even small San Fernando Academy, with only 25 acres, was located in the country and had a farm on which the students worked.

As Ellen White kept telling them, the key factor was the amount of land owned by the school. If there was not enough, it could not properly fulfill the plan.

For example, consider Washington Missionary College. Today, located in a few buildings on a city street, it is a pathetic shadow of what it once was. But, originally, it shared 50 acres with the sanitarium and also operated a 100-acre farm, where the students worked. Another example would be La Sierra, where the students worked on its 330-acre farm. The situation is far different today.

We will now return to Battle Creek and pick up the story where we earlier left off.