Seventh-day Adventists have been known to differ and even argue over some of
Ellen White's counsel. That situation is especially true of those statements
that seem so straightforward and clear. One such statement appears in volume 3
of the Testmonies: "Parents should be the only teachers of
their children until they have reached eight or ten years of age" (p. 137;
italics supplied).
That passage is an excellent candidate for inflexible interpretation. After
all, it is quite categorical. It offers no conditions and hints at no
exceptions. Containing no "ifs," "ands," "ors," or
"buts" to modify its impact, it just plainly states as fact that "parents
should be the only teachers of their children until they have reached
eight or ten years of age." Mrs. White first published the statement in
1872. The fact that it reappeared in her writings in 1882 and 1913 undoubtedly
had the effect of strengthening what appears to be its unconditional nature.
Interestingly enough, however, a struggle over that statement has provided
us with perhaps the very best record we possess of how Mrs. White interpreted
her own writings.
The Adventists living near the St. Helena Sanitarium in northern California
had built a church school in 1902. The older children attended it, while some
careless Adventist parents let their younger children run freely in the
neighborhood without proper training and discipline. Some of the school board
members believed that they should build a classroom for the younger children,
but others held that it would be wrong to do so, because Ellen White had plainly
stated that "parents should be the only teachers of their children
until they have reached eight or ten years of age."
One faction on the board apparently felt that it was more important to give
some help to the neglected children than to hold to the letter of the law. The
other faction believed that it had an inflexible command, some "straight
testimony" that it must obey. To put it mildly, the issue split the school
board. An interview with Mrs. White was arranged.
Early in the interview Mrs. White reaffirmed her position that the family
should ideally be the school for young children. "The home," she said,
"is both a family church and a family school" (Selected Messages,
book 3, p. 214). That is the ideal that one finds throughout her writings. The
institutional church and school are there to supplement the work of a healthy
family. That is the ideal.
But, as we discovered in the previous section, the ideal is not always the
real. Or, to say it in other words, reality is often less than ideal. Thus Ellen
White continued in the interview: "Mothers should be able to
instruct their little ones wisely during the earlier years of childhood. If
every mother were capable of doing this, and would take time to teach
her children the lessons they should learn in early life, then all
children could be kept in the home school until they are eight, or nine, or ten
years old" (ibid., pp. 214, 215; italics supplied).
Here we begin to find Mrs. White dealing with a reality that modifies the
categorical and unconditional nature of her statement on parents being the only
teachers of their children until 8 or 10 years of age. The ideal is that mothers
"should" be able to function as the best teachers. But realism
intrudes when Ellen White uses such words as "if" and "then."
She definitely implies that not all mothers are capable and that not all are
willing. But "if" they are both capable and willing, "then all
children could be kept in the home school."
During the interview she remarked that "God desires us to deal with
these problems sensibly" (ibid., p. 215). Ellen White became quite stirred
up with those readers who took an inflexible attitude toward her writings and
sought to follow the letter of her message while missing the underlying
principles. She evidenced disapproval of both the words and attitudes of her
rigid interpreters when she declared: "My mind has been greatly stirred
in regard to the idea, 'Why, Sister White has said so and so, and Sister White
has said so and so; and therefore we are going right up to it.' " She
then added that "God wants us all to have common sense, and He wants us
to reason from common sense. Circumstances alter conditions. Circumstances
change the relation of things" (ibid., p. 217; italics supplied).
Ellen White was anything but inflexible in interpreting her own writings,
and it is a point of the first magnitude that we realize that fact. She had no
doubt that the mindless use of her ideas could be harmful. Thus it is little
wonder that she said that "God wants us all to have common sense" in
using extracts from her writings, even when she phrased those extracts in the
strongest and most unconditional language.