"School days, school days,

Dear old golden rule days,

Reading and writing and ‘rithmatic,

Taught to the tune of a hickory stick.”

Yes, that is education, but it certainly is a lot less than Christian education. First of all, Christian education starts in a Christian home. Christian education is taught in an atmosphere of prayer to God for guidance. Christian education is concerned with developing pure character as well as filling heads with knowledge.

As a child I attended a two-room schoolhouse attached to the 2nd Seventh-day Adventist Church in Dayton, Ohio. My daddy was the first elder, and my sister and I left home with him every school day at 5:30 a.m. We drove the 17 miles to Dayton from our farm home near Germantown. Daddy opened the school, started the fire in the potbellied stove, and turned the water on that had been secured the night before to prevent the pipes from freezing.

Classes always started with singing and prayers. I learned U.S. history early, as I heard the upper class boys and girls recite their lessons. I knew geography, geometry, Latin, and civics way before my time because our little school included grades K–10. I was taught to print a school newspaper by the holograph method. We were taught to read by the phonetic system, which means I can still pronounce words never seen before.

I can remember my daddy giving impassioned pleas to the members to contribute the teachers’ salaries each month. He was the champion of the teachers. Forced to drop out of school to earn his keep, he valued education. And he was particularly fond of Christian education.

Our school had the most awesome school closing programs at the end of each year. Proud parents sat in the audience as the teachers put us through the paces. Oh, we knew reading, writing, and arithmetic. But we also knew all the books of the Bible in order, and the Beatitudes, and the Ten Commandments, and the 23rd Psalm! We could give simple Bible studies because we practiced on each other under the watchful eye of godly teachers.

So, you see, it is not such a miracle after all that I am who I am and where I am. A Christian home had cooperated with a Christian school to form and mold this clay for God’s use. I recommend it without reservation!