Merle Glenn Golnick

1. 5/17/1927, Freeborn County, MN USA

 

Spouse/Family

Wife: Dorothy Pauline (nee Buehner), b. 12/20/1930, South India m. 8/7/1955

Children: Catherine Elaine (Haedge) (1956), Christine Lynette (1958), Patricia Lynn

(Thurber) (1961)

 

Dates of Service Field Call Assignment

1967-1993 Taiwan Educator/Missionary

 

Biographical Summary

In May of 1967, Merle Golnick passed the fortieth anniversary of his birth and completed seventeen years of teaching. For the last five of those years, he had taught religion and English at Lutheran High School East in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. Both Merle and his wife, Dorothy, had earned degrees in education, Merle a B.S. from Concordia River Forest and Dorothy a B.S. from Concordia Seward.  Teaching was their vocation. Soon after school closed for the summer, Merle, Dorothy, and their three daughters traveled to Missouri to attend a wedding. From there they drove to Minnesota to visit Merle’s mother and then back to South Euclid.  Merle had enrolled in a six-week summer program for the teaching of reading at Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

 

In the mail that had accumulated while the family was gone was an invitation from the Mission Board to teach English and lead a religion program at Concordia Middle School in Taiwan, a ministry of the China Evangelical Lutheran Church. The Golnicks found Taiwan on a map and tried to learn more about the island. As they thought and prayed about it, they became convinced that the Mission Board’s invitation was really God’s call to go to Taiwan. Merle resigned his position at Lutheran High School East.

 

The Golnicks arrived in Taiwan at the end of September 1967 and moved into a 2-story “row house” in the city of Chia Yi halfway down the island. Merle and Dorothy began to study the Chinese language, doing so until the summer of 1968. In the fall of 1968 Merle began his first year of teaching Chinese students at Concordia Middle School (in Taiwan, “middle school” means grades 7-12). That fall he taught one hour each week in each of three classes of junior 2 (eighth grade) students and three classes of senior 1 (tenth grade) students. At the same time he continued to study Chinese, an extremely difficult language. In his perception, he seemed to have no ability to learn Chinese, and teaching English frustrated him.  During their first year on Taiwan the children attended a small U.S. Department of Defense elementary school. This school closed down after the Golnicks had been in Taiwan only one year.  The missionaries in the area opened a small school where their children could study rather than go to boarding school.  Dorothy served as head teacher at this school for three years, until another teacher was sent by the mission board to the school.

 

During the years 1968-72, Merle continued to teach English and study Chinese but felt little satisfaction doing either one. He wondered if he had misunderstood what he thought had been God’s call to come to Taiwan. It seemed that the family’s being there had been and was of no service to anyone. But the Mission Board had spent a lot of money to put them on Taiwan and keep them there.  In 1972, it was time for a year-long furlough. The question was whether or not they should return to Taiwan at the end of the furlough year. Gradually they understood it to be God’s will to do so. They used the year praying for God’s direction and studying and researching how to teach English as a foreign language at the University of Hawaii. A year later, in August 1973, Merle received an MA in the Teaching of English as a Foreign Language.  They returned to Taiwan and began to put some of what they had learned into practice. By this time their daughters, having finished elementary school, began attending Morrison Academy, a boarding school an hour’s train ride away from where they lived.

 

In the fall of 1974, Dorothy, who had been more and more involved in teaching English to small groups, including through the China Youth Corps, returned to the University of Hawaii to finish work on her Master’s degree in Teaching English as a Foreign Language. She brought back a book by Caleb Gattegno, The Silent Way. Both Merle and Dorothy read the book.  Many of the ideas coincided with ideas they had encountered in their classes at the University of Hawaii. Using Gattegno’s ideas and the material furnished by the Ministry of Education on Taiwan, they began to revise the way they taught English. At this time Dorothy too began teaching at Concordia Middle School (CMS).  First she was a co-teacher with Merle (classes could have up to 60 students, so they divided classes into groups of 30 for better learning experiences). She then took on her own classes, first at the seventh-grade level and gradually teaching up to the senior level.  During the second half of the 1970’s, with the blessing of the school administration and English teachers working together, it became evident that students from CMS were learning English well. In fact CMS students were able to use English more easily than most other students. Other schools began to take note of Concordia‘s students. Classes of English majors from Taiwan Normal University regularly included CMS on their graduation trips to observe English teaching at Concordia.

 

Sometime during the early 1980s, the school began to be inundated with applications to enter Junior Middle School (grades 7-9).  The Taiwan government education department limited the number of students Concordia, a private school, could accept each year, and each year CMS had up to six, seven, and eight times that number of applications.  With progress being made at the Junior Middle School, Merle began work to upgrade the English program of the Senior Middle School.  After several years, Concordia became the school of choice for many senior students, too. When the Golnicks retired and left Concordia in 1993, there were three classes in each of the three senior grades, but several years later that had been increased to six classes for each grade because of the volume of applications.

 

Upon return to the United States in 1993, the Golnicks served for six months in the missionary-in-residence program of the Southern District. Though at this point they were technically retired and living in Ocean Springs, MS, they continued – and continue – to find ways to serve overseas, and they maintain close contact with Concordia Middle School. Besides returning to Concordia for anywhere from one to four months for a number of years helping to train teachers and develop curriculum materials, they have served in Inner Mongolia, China, with the English Language Institute of China in 1995; at a teacher training institute in Phu Tho, Vietnam, for the school year 1999-2000; and as teachers of missionary children in Togo for the school year 2004-05. Besides this continued foreign mission work, they are active in their church in the United States and continue to promote education and the sharing of the Gospel wherever they go!

 

Nota Bene

Merle received an honorary L.L.D. degree from Concordia River Forest in 1989.

 

Phase 2 Information

Biggest missiological issue faced?

In Taiwan there was little cooperation between the national church and the missionaries. The Mission Board supplied the money for the operation of the church including salaries for pastors and, of course, for the work and livelihood of missionaries. Salaries and housing for missionaries were on a considerably higher level than for national pastors and workers in the church. Pastors and church workers were supplied with small motorcycles, but missionaries had autos, first supplied by the Mission Board and later each missionary purchased his own with the help of the Mission Board.

 

At Concordia Middle School, due to the Chinese system of education, there was tremendous competition between teachers. Teachers refused to share ideas with other teachers because doing so might give some advantage to other teachers in the preparation of their students to participate in examinations. Merle notes that teachers came to meetings if he shared ideas with them, but were reluctant to share their ideas. He also believes that as they continued to work together, their reluctance to share ideas may have signaled their lack of confidence. In the Chinese education system teachers were not encouraged to be creative. One academic dean told Merle, “teachers are to teach the book and students are to learn the book!” Eventually, there was cooperation and teachers began working together as a team.

 

Most significant contribution during missionary service?

Because missionaries and church workers were unable to gather young people to speak the Gospel to them, Concordia Middle School was established as a means of meeting young people, beginning operation in the fall of 1967. During the years the Golnicks were there, they, along with the English faculty, developed methods and materials to teach English. Through God’s blessing those methods and materials, many young people learned to use English much more fluently than students in other schools.  The English program drew many students to the school where they could hear the gospel and join in Christian activities.

 

Connection to today’s mission?

The English program that the Golnicks helped develop is still in use today. Fifteen years after they left Taiwan, it is still the basic structure for teaching English at Concordia. A young American college graduate teaching at Concordia called it the “tent pole” of the English program. Dorothy and Merle have made several visits there since they retired.  Upon invitation of the principal, they returned for four weeks in the summer of 2008 to help train English teachers.  Upon further invitation they intend to return in February of 2009 for a semester to continue developing those materials and further help to train teachers.

 

Although not related to the English program, the school has for several years during vacation periods sent teams of Christian teachers to the mountainous region of Thailand to provide educational experiences to children there.

 

Lessons Learned

• When God calls a person to do something, there may be several years between the time of the call and the missionary fully realizing what God’s call to him really was.

 

• When in a foreign country, it takes a person quite a long time to understand how to fit in to the ways of doing things there. For example, the Chinese educational system has underlying attitudes that aren’t the same as those in the U.S. Therefore, even if the curriculum is similar to that in an American school, the attitude will still be much different. Missionaries must be patient, learn from their hosts, and avoid the trap of thinking that the American way is the only good way.

 

Best Practices

• Concordia Middle School benefited not only from its development of English programs and other educational opportunities for students, but also from the attitude of its staff. The teachers at the school were all devoted to their tasks and concerned about their students.  They devoted a lot of time to their work and were encouraging to the students. In turn, the students responded, developing talents God had given them. Although all subjects are taught well, as they are also in other schools, it is the English program that stands out and draws students to CMS. Furthermore, as a Christian school, it draws Christian teachers and has a positive influence on non-Christian teachers. Students feel their teachers’ concern for their welfare and love for them. Dorothy recalls a mother who once said she wanted her children to go to Concordia because she felt they would be safe there; there would be no fights and the atmosphere would be supportive. Some of the teachers have echoed those sentiments in calling Concordia “an atmosphere of love.”

 

Phase 3 Information

Inspiration for entering foreign missions?

God called the Golnicks, who previously had lived and taught only in the United States, through the Mission Board to teach English and direct the religion program of this newly established school for Chinese students in grades 7-9, extending to grade 12 a year later.

 

Quotation by/about or brief story:

• Merle tells about the administration of the school: Schools in Taiwan teach the curriculum and use teaching methods that come from the Ministry of Education. The Ministry does not encourage innovation by teachers. Principals do not encourage creativity. If a teacher is creative and his students fail, the principal takes responsibility. It may take time for a teacher to gain the trust of the principal for him to try new ideas. At Concordia God provided the right principal at the right time. Changes were made and the school grew.