Since their early days, Seventh-day Adventists have believed that education is a vital aspect of the church’s mission work, embodying Christ’s redemptive work for humanity in restoring human beings to the image of God, their Creator. In the early 1870s, the church began to develop a denominationally based school system. Since then, thousands upon thousands of Adventist educators have shared the core values of Bible-based education in the many Adventist schools worldwide. The following is a biography of Alma Estelle Baker McKibbin, a pioneering Adventist educator and author of the first Bible lesson textbooks for Adventist primary education. It is adapted from a longer article by Laura Wibberding in the Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists (ESDA), available online at https:// encyclopedia.adventist.org. Alma Baker McKibbin’s sacrifice and commitment to Adventist education make her a worthy example for many Adventist educators and students to follow in her footsteps of faith.

EARLY LIFE, HEALDSBURG COLLEGE, AND MARRIAGE

Alma Baker McKibbin was born November 26, 1871, in Webster County, Iowa, the firstborn child of Alonzo Lafayette Baker (1841-1927) and Estella Antionette Tucker Baker (1851-1911). In the summer before her senior year of high school, two Adventist ministers, Charles P. Haskell and B. F. Stureman, came from Denver to hold meetings in Saguache, Colorado, where Alma and her family lived.¹ She was baptized, along with her mother and grandmother. They became the core of a new Adventist church. Alma was appointed children’s teacher in the new church, the first in a lifetime of teaching roles.

When she started school, her father told her she must study well so she could grow up to become a teacher. Her first teacher, though, an impatient man, berated her and threatened to make her wear a dunce cap, and she became convinced she couldn’t learn. Fortunately, he was replaced by a new teacher, Miss Gould, who was gentle and encouraging, and Alma excelled at school thereafter, particularly at composition. She determined that, like Miss Gould, she would love and nurture children.² In the fall of 1889, Alma enrolled at Healdsburg College, an early Adventist school in northern California, where she took the teacher training course. Along with her college studies, she took Bible worker’s training and managed children’s Sabbath schools through correspondence. During her third year at Healdsburg she married Edwin McKibbin (1866-1896), who was already teaching at Healdsburg. Unfortunately, shortly thereafter, Edwin was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Alma taught his classes for him that winter. The couple moved to southern California in 1894 to live with Edwin’s relatives, where their infant son Lorin (1893-1894) died at 11 months old. Alma worked to support her husband until his death on November 4, 1896.

EDUCATIONAL INNOVATOR

With no income and exhausted health, bereaved of both her husband and son at age 25, Alma Baker McKibbin moved in with friends and taught their youngest children. She then agreed to teach the eight-grade Centralia, California, church school the next year. The conditions were daunting. The church wanted all the curriculum to be Bible-based, using no public school textbooks in any subject but math. The facilities were poor, and the students were famously unruly. McKibbin taught from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., then stayed up late writing the next day’s lessons in her cold room. She was forced to take a six-week break because of pneumonia and depression, and when she returned, the board had run out of funds and could not pay her. She managed to complete the year, surviving on a diet of mostly walnuts.³

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For this feat, McKibbin is often called the first Adventist church school teacher in California. Since home schools and other church-sponsored schools had been tried already, it is more accurate to say she taught the first Adventist church-school curriculum.

In the summer of 1899, McKibbin enrolled in a teachers’ training institute at Healdsburg College, but when the scheduled teacher (the school’s president) was called away on business, she was asked to take over the 13-week course. She then remained in Healdsburg as principal of the Healdsburg Preparatory School, beginning in the fall of 1899. During the summers, she conducted teacher-training institutes. Though she encouraged the other teachers to write their own Bible lessons, most found themselves incapable once in their teaching positions. McKibbin revised the Bible lessons she initially developed in Centralia and officially published them in 1903. There was so much demand for the first edition that she printed and shipped each section as soon as it was written. These were known as the “shoe-string books,” since recipients had to bind them themselves. Over the next years, while teaching full time, McKibbin wrote separate lessons for each grade, and continually revised them. Her books were used as Adventist Bible textbooks for more than 50 years.

FROM HEALDSBURG TO ANGWIN TO MOUNTAIN VIEW

In 1912, McKibbin moved to Angwin, California, to teach Bible history—her favorite subject—at Pacific Union College (PUC). The famous 1918 influenza pandemic came to Angwin during the 1918-1919 school year. McKibbin contracted the virus three times, which forced her to retire at 48.

Reluctantly, she left the college on the mountain and moved to Mountain View, California, in 1922, where her brother, Alonzo Baker, was by then working at Pacific Press as an editor. McKibbin spent three years teaching Bible and Adventist history at Mountain View Academy during the 1920s before settling into real retirement.

LEGACY

On April 9, 1942, McKibbin was the guest of honor at the dedication for McKibbin Hall, a new preparatory school building on the campus of Pacific Union College.⁴ In 1957, she was a featured speaker for PUC’s 75th anniversary.⁵ In 1972, she received an honorary Doctor of Literature degree from PUC,⁶ and the Adventist educator’s Medallion of Merit.⁷

McKibbin died on July 16, 1974. She was buried in Healdsburg, California. She had worked for the church 33 years, authored 15 books, most of them Bible textbooks,⁸ and pioneered Adventist elementary education. In 1990, the North American Division established the Alma McKibbin Sabbatical Award for K–12 educators.⁹

Laura Ochs Wibberding (MA, Andrews University, Michigan, U.S.A.) is Assistant Professor of Religion and History at Pacific Union College in Angwin, California, U.S.A.

Dragoslava Santrac (PhD in Old Testament, North-West University, RSA/Greenwich School of Theology, UK), is Managing Editor of Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists, General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, Silver Spring, Maryland, U.S.A. Email: [email protected].

Recommended Citation

Laura Wibberding , "A Pioneer of Adventist Church School Curriculum: Alma Baker Mckibbin (1871–1974)," Dialogue 35:2 (2023): 29-31.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. Marie Louise Myers, Historical/Analytical Study of the Contributions of Alma E. McKibbin to the Seventh-day Adventist Church School System (PhD diss., Andrews University, 1992), 36.
2. Alma E. McKibbin, Step by Step (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1964), 29.
3. Susie Myers, “A Woman’s Struggle to Pioneer a Curriculum,” Adventist Heritage 16:3 (Spring 1995): 39.
4. “Preparatory School Dedication Set for April 9,” Pacific Union Recorder (March 25, 1942): 4.
5. “First Event Successful,” ibid. (April 15, 1957): 8.
6. “News Briefs: Pacific Union,” The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald (July 27, 1972): 21.
7. “100 Year Old Educator Is Awarded the Medallion of Merit,” Pacific Union Recorder (April 17, 1972): 2.
8. “McKibbin, Alma Estelle Baker, 1871– ,” WorldCat Identities”: https://www.worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n80056257/.
9. “NAD Establishes Sabbatical Award,” Adventist Review (September 13, 1990): 7.