Messenger of the Lord

Avondale College

When Ellen White went to Australia in 1891, little did anyone foresee how great the impact of its new institution of higher learning would have on the denomination’s worldwide educational philosophy. No other Adventist school has been more favored by the presence and counsel of God’s messenger to the church. Behind her were the struggling American schools, wobbling into the future trying to combine conventional education principles with the reforming principles of education driven by the Great Controversy Theme. ¹¹ MOL 355.5

Early in 1894 Mrs. White wrote the mandate for the new Australian school, entitled “Work and Education.” ¹² In the opening paragraph she raised the central questions regarding this and other schools: “How shall they be conducted? What shall be the education and training of the youth? Where shall our Australian Bible School be located?” MOL 355.6

Then she proceeded to answer her questions. She reemphasized that the purpose of Christian education is to prepare students to meet the Lord. This kind of aim means students must rethink their recreational activities, that the school must be located “a wide distance from the cities,” that useful work must be a part of the curriculum, that only the best work-habits are acceptable, that “dullness and ignorance are no virtue,” that for Australia “there is hope in the soil,” and that physiology must be in the curriculum for all. ¹³ MOL 355.7

Ellen White was learning through experience as well as through visions. In 1898 she wrote that Adventist education must include “a different order of things,” but that “it has taken much time to understand what changes should be made.” ¹⁴ In September of 1898 she wrote that “our school must be a model school for others.” ¹⁵ In 1899 she said that God had designed Avondale to be “an object lesson” and not “to pattern after any school that has been established in America, or after any school” in Australia. ¹⁶ In 1900 she penned that the Avondale school was “to be a pattern school.” ¹⁷ MOL 356.1

Ellen White never used the expression “educational blueprint.” ¹⁸ Though using such words as “model,” “object lesson,” and “pattern,” she did not mean that Avondale was to be rigidly copied in every detail: “The Lord has not designed any one, special, exact plan in education.” ¹⁹ Regarding the new school at Madison, Tennessee (described below), she wrote that “no exact pattern can be given for the establishment of schools in new fields. The climate, the surroundings, the condition of the country, and the means at hand with which to work must all bear a part in shaping the work.” ²⁰ As with her counsel in other areas, such as health, she outlined basic principles, not inflexible rules. ²¹ Model schools, patterns, and object lessons are just that—they manifest basic principles that may require adaptation to local conditions. MOL 356.2

To son Willie in 1897 she emphasized that “no breezes from Battle Creek are to be wafted in.” Living adjacent to the campus, she still felt that she “must watch before and behind and on every side to permit nothing to find entrance that has been presented before me as injuring our schools in America.” ²² MOL 356.3