March 01, 1990 by Ralph D. Winter

 The life and work of a missionary do not easily fit into the pattern required by U.S. institutions of higher education. Yet most of the universities around the world are there because of the global mission

movement, and missionaries have made many notable contributions ranging from anthropology and linguistics, to medicine and political science. However, by now the curious "university" pattern has been
embraced with such unrealistic awe by the non-Western nations, that, rightly or wrongly, missions must take it more seriously than ever.

Introduction

Most missionaries today have degrees in higher education. Hundreds, scattered in every part of the world, hold Ph.D. degrees.

The agony behind this reality is the fact that there has always been a tragic tension between staying home for a lengthy period for the purpose of "getting" education and going overseas soon enough properly to "get" the field language and culture, which is also a crucial type of education, especially for the missionary.

However, we are now at the place where so much of the university tradition has been transplanted to the non-Western world that it is becoming more and more possible for both missionaries and national leaders to gain the vaunted credentials of higher education without drastic absences from the field.

Degree Mania, or If You Can't Lick 'em, Join 'em

Of course, some may still say that the university tradition is "of the world" and should be spurned by the missionary tradition. Sure, it is of the world. But the world is precisely what missionaries have to deal with. Missionaries must "speak the language of the native" and penetrate the many cultures of this world. Thus, whether the university tradition is essential to faith or not, it is by now part of the culture to be penetrated.

This reminds me of the ugly situation in which young "highly trained" missionaries rushing out in the full blush of the Student Volunteer Movement a hundred years ago pushed national pastors out of their pulpits on the grounds that those national leaders were not college trained. Right! But that was one hundred years ago.

Now, African governments are keeping missionaries out who lack higher degrees. Now, in certain spheres in practically all non-Western countries, holding university credentials is about as all-important as knowing how to speak the language. In the Philippines, in Japan, in Korea, in Indonesia, in India, in Africa, etc. the mania for higher
education has hit the mission field far harder and looms much larger than even in this country.

The Unsolved Problem

Some linguists say that after puberty, one's ability to learn the language begins to fall off. In theory, other things being equal, the sooner a person gets to the field the better, as far as assimilating the language and culture are concerned.

On the other hand, if a person wants to arrive fully "prepared" with college, seminary, specialized training in cross-cultural communication, actual experience in the pastorate etc., he or she may not be able to get to the field until another ten or twenty years has gone past. And that, too, has its profound problems.

The flourishing "short term" options available today assist with this unsolved problem, without entirely solving it. A "junior year abroad" might help, except that such programs are often not linked to a non-Western country but to Europe, as a contribution to the student's understanding of his own cultural roots.

The Possible-Impossible Answer

Thus, the new missionary is steadily getting older, on the average. Years ago Wycliffe took people right out of high school, or after two years of college. Now they expect two years of additional graduate work which they themselves supervise beyond college, and, now they themselves are trying out a way to give some of their new recruits a taste of the field sooner!

It would seem that the only possible answer is to overlap the ideal of lengthy preparation and the ideal of earlier arrival for best field adaptation!

Such an idea would be unthinkable if it were not for the fact that by now the university tribal culture has spread and established itself all over the world. The Singer sewing machine, Coca-Cola, cigarettes, and the university are by now virtually universal.

All of this is not an unmixed blessing. In country after country suicide rates shoot up as higher education gains strength. There is quite often no necessary connection between school programs and the real world. In the tiny country of Guatemala--- even when I was there 30 years ago--- I can recall that there were 13,000 university-trained
public school teachers without jobs. Recent stories about the Chinese students marooned in this country tells a similar tale--- the reason some of them do not want to go back is simply because there is no job for them. They will end up doing something which does not require a university post-graduate specialization at all.

Reuniting the Youth and Adult Worlds

But the most devastating critique of prolonged school experience may be made by a recent book from a Cornell University professor, Steven F. Hamilton. Reviewed in a national magazine, the book appeared in stores a few days later, entitled, Apprenticeship for Adulthood, (The Free Press, 1990).

The book is in part a study of what happens to youth who do not attend college and their plight in getting decent jobs, etc. It is at the same time an ominous warning that the lengthy separation of American young people from the adult world by prolonged college experiences is a dangerous and drastic retardation of adulthood. He feels that it would be a major contribution to our society to adopt some aspects of
the German apprenticeship pattern, but emphasizing general education more than the German pattern does. Perhaps the reason why young people are flooding our prison system in America is because they do not have an apprenticeship path in which they can early be re-introduced into the adult world.

In proportion to its population, Germany has 28 times as many young people in apprenticeship (p.39). The U.S. has, proportionately, 20 times as many people behind prison bars. "Young people (under 25) constitute two-thirds of all those arrested for property crimes and half of those arrested for violent crimes," (p.8).

All of this means that the huge amount of tinkering modern man has made in the structure of his own society has sometimes tended to create a Frankenstein monster. To export this pattern to the mission field has been a questionable procedure, even though it has caught on with breathtaking speed.

It would seem apparent that we need to redesign the college experience so as to allow youth to grow up in the adult world much sooner than at present, and do this without sacrificing the hard-won American emphasis on a broad basis of general education.

Probably no profession is suffering more from prolonged isolation of youth from the real world than the mission tradition, since the real world of work in the the case of missions cannot be comprehended by part-time jobs, or cooperative education that merely allows young people to be immersed in the adult world of his own culture, as
important as that is.

No, the young person who will be able to make a meaningful contribution in missions needs to be integrated into an industry whose major work is almost completely out of sight unless the school experience itself allows, permits, yea assures young people of substantial "overseas" experience in the non-Western world, and makes sure this occurs all throughout the college years--- is not just pasted on the end or injected during a summer or two.

What Can the Missions Do?

Heretofore no mission agency has owned and operated its own university in the United States. While many denominational missions have had some input into the character of the denominational colleges of their tradition, there is no example today of an institution of higher education which is totally controlled by a mission structure, except the one described on the next two pages.

The Curious Origin of the American Prolonged School Syndrome

The launching of Harvard College is often taken as an important event in the social evolution of this country. It is almost mythical. In actuality it was a school to which children went at the age of 12 or 13, often without any schooling beforehand. It never at any time produced mainly ministers. It was like a three-year grade school that spoke Latin. All "colleges" were like that. The very word college back then meant in English what its cognate still means in both Spanish and French--- a grade school.

Gradually, villages started their own day schools, essentially
teaching Latin and reading in general, the three "Rs" and so forth. At that crucial point Harvard decided to escalate and offer "something more." Then, after a few decades, the town and village schools escalated from 3 to 4 years and then 6 years, and Harvard stayed in business, always offering "something more."

A hundred years later, by the time Thomas Jefferson graduated from William and Mary college, most "colleges" were still for children with little or no previous schooling. Graduating at age 17 Jefferson was a bit behind. As late as 1865, the State University of Iowa admitted children with no previous schooling, if they could pass a test in addition, subtraction and multiplication. (They did not have to know
how to divide!)

It would be another 50 years--- well into this century--- before the idea of "high" school gained much acceptance. Then, the only way the idea that "more is better" could be further pursued was to coin a still higher term--- "higher" education, meaning higher than high school. And missionaries carried the latest ideas to the field.

But it was only after the Second World War (and its "G.I.Bill" paying college tuition for 11,000,000 exGIs) that the idea began to take hold that perhaps everyone ought to go not only for 12 years, but for another four (or more)` years. The word "dropout" was coined for people who did not finish college, as though some tragic event had occurred.