Mennonite+Christian+Day+School

"Mennonites took steps to organize a school as early as 1701. Christopher Dock, who came from Germany to Pennsylvania about 1714, devoted himself unceasingly to the labor of teaching, with little regard for compensation. Mennonites established many Christian day schools during the eighteenth century. They were most careful in selecting teachers of the right faith and in choosing textbooks with suitable content. but, as the state school movement grew, Mennonite schools gradually ceased to exist. For about fifty years few of them were maintained. However, with the growth of secularism and the trend of American education away from God and the Bible, Mennonites have been impressed with the need for Christian schools.

Bishop Swartzentruber of Iowa, with a vision of this need, wrote as follows in 1915: 'Our greatest need is well established Church school, staffed with talented teachers of our own members, who are sound in the faith, and able to teach others also.' He pleaded for church schools in every community where there was a church, echoing the conclusion to which other church leaders had also come. The first of the new schools was organized in 1928 in Greenwood, Delaware. The movement for such schools increased in strength, spreading across the nation. in 1959, Mennonites reported 160 Christian day schools with an enrollment of 8,893 pupils.

Mennonite schools are under the direct control of the various congregations and are financed by freewill offerings and tuition - mostly by the former. When Mennonite parents are inclined to question the necessity of the financial burden entailed by Christian schools, they are enjoined to ask themselves if their children are worth more to the state than to the church and to consider them in the light of eternity. Mennonite education is founded upon these convictions: God is the source of all truth, natural and supernatural; the task of the church is to teach that God may be glorified and that every child may be brought to Christ; parents are responsible for the training of their children in the ways of the Lord; children should be taught all things needful, both spiritual and material. To achieve these objectives great care is taken to see that everything in the school, curricular and extracurricular, all interactions, all relationships, and all interpretations, are truly Christian."

Excerpt taken from the //History of Christian Education// written by C.B. Eavey.