ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the development of that commitment, with an emphasis on the origin, growth, and current status of elementary and secondary education among Adventists in the United States. In 1990 the Seventh-day Adventist Church operated over 5,000 schools worldwide. Reform was also at the base of the explosion in the number of Adventist schools in the 1890s. By the time of the 1937 convention the Adventist educational system had become well regulated. Its organizational structure had been developed, its curricular stance had solidified, and the denomination was in the process of upgrading its schools at all levels. The school at Madison soon became the mother of a large number of self-supporting elementary and secondary schools throughout the South. One of the central features of Adventist education in the first decades of the twentieth century was its rapid and continuous growth. Some important goals did not meet expectations, such as faith maturity.
