Objectives of Adventist Education
Education
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Date
2011.10.15
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Objectives of Adventist Education
Elementary and Secondary Education
The Seventh-day Adventist Church desires to provide for all its youth a general education within the framework of the science of salvation. The fundamentals and common branches of knowledge are to be studied so that proficiency is achieved and a high quality of teaching is maintained.The church-related elementary school will assist each child to develop
(1) a love and appreciation for the privileges, rights, and responsibilities guaranteed each individual and social group and
(2) a wholesome respect and attitude for each unit of society?home, church, school, and government. The eklementary school will offer an organized program to ensure adequate development leading toward total spiritual, physical, mental, and emotional health and a basic core of skills and knowledge for everyday living.
The church-related secondary school, predicated on the results obtained through the elementary school with character building as an undergirding structure, will endeavor to operate realistically for each student in the upgrading and maintenance of health, in the command of fundamental learning processes, in the teaching of worthy home membership, vocational skills, civic education, worthy use of leisure, ethical maturity. The secondary school implementing the Church philosophy will seek for objectives of spiritual dedication, self-realization, social adjustment, civic responsibility, and economic efficiency.
Higher Education
The Seventh-day Adventist Church operates institutions of higher education for the purpose of providing special opportunities for Seventh-day Adventist youth who have satisfactorily completed secondary school instruction, and who are desirous of pursuing academic disciplines in the liberal arts, obtaining associate or baccalaureate degrees, preparing for lifework, or entering professional or graduate schools.
The church-related institutions in their custodial, creative, and evaluative roles help develop within the students ethical, religious, and social values compatible with Church philosophy and teachings, values which prepare the graduate for his/her lifework or vocation inside or outside denominational employ. These institutions also help develop in their students a higher concept of service to God and man.
Graduate Education
Seventh-day Adventist education is integrative; that is, it regards man and life as a whole. Human works, institutions, and history are viewed from the point of man’s divine origin and destiny as revealed in the Word of God. Freedom in man, academic as well as personal, provides a progressive pursuit and discovery of truth which existed first in the mind of God and which man has been permitted to rediscover by revelation, study, reflection, and research. The end product must be, not a detached intellectual but a mature and committed Christian.
The essential business of a Seventh-day Adventist university or college on the graduate level is the mastery, critical evaluation, discovery, and dissemination of knowledge, and the nurture of wisdom in a community of Christian scholars. The Church supports graduate education in order to make effective in teacher and student alike the insights and values which Christian faith and doctrine provide as a vertical dimension in the study of the arts and sciences and of man and his institutions.
To a greater degree than in undergraduate education, the graduate school must concern itself with the discovery, critical evaluation, and application of knowledge to human thought and behavior. In these communities of scholars special efforts will be made to foster an inquisitive spirit that is not content to master the broad reaches of the known but diligently explores the unknown. Adventist scholars participate in the enlargement of the island of knowledge existing in the immense seas of the unknown that surround man.
Graduate education requires the application of techniques of investigation and evaluation as found in the laws of evidence. The Christian educator and advanced student alike utilize the systems of evidence of reason and science, but also recognize the validity of divine revelation, which is accorded a paramount position.
Finally, all Seventh-day Adventist graduate education concerns itself with the nurture and training of leaders for the Church and its enterprises and for those service-centered vocations and professions wherein they may effectively witness for God and promote both the good name and worldwide mission of His Church.