Education

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Should Education Be Compulsory?

August 18, 2010 in Education by Greg | 2 comments

In 1971, Murray Rothbard pointed out some of the pitfalls of compulsory education. Although he felt “a course where one teacher instructs one pupil is clearly by far the best type of course” he pointed out:

What then shall we say of laws imposing compulsory schooling on every child? These laws are endemic in the Western world. In those places where private schools are allowed, they must ail meet standards of instruction imposed by the government. Yet the injustice of imposing any standards of instruction should be clear. Some children are duller and should be instructed at a slower pace; the bright children require a rapid pace to develop their faculties. Furthermore, many children are very apt in one subject and very dull in another. They should certainly be permitted to develop themselves in their best subjects and to drop the poor ones. Whatever the standards that the government imposes for instruction, injustice is done to all – to the dullards who cannot absorb any instruction, to those with different sets of aptitudes in different subjects, to the bright children whose minds would like to be off and winging in more advanced courses but who must wait until the dullards are hounded once again. Similarly, any pace that the teacher sets in class wreaks an injustice on almost all; on the dull who cannot keep up, and on the bright who lose interest and precious chances to develop their great potential.¹

He continued,

The key issue in the entire discussion is simply this: shall the parent or the State be the overseer of the child? . . . From an infancy of complete dependence and subjection to adults, the child must grow up gradually to the status of an independent adult. The question is under whose guidance, and virtual “ownership” the child should be: his parents’ or the State’s? There is no third, or middle, ground in this issue. Some party must control, and no one suggests that some individual third party have authority to seize the child and rear it.

Should Education Be Compulsory? »»

Education, Free & Compulsory. Center for Independent Education, 1971.↩

Dreams of Brigham Young University

October 21, 2009 in Education by Greg | No comments

Today, Carrie told me of a talk given by Merrill J. Bateman about the history of Brigham Young University.¹ Just as Henry B. Eyring spoke about the future of BYU in A Consecrated Place, Elder Bateman spoke of those who were given dreams of its future destiny.

Recently I shared with the faculty and staff some key events from BYU’s history. During the preparation of the material, some insights were gleaned with regard to the special nature of this institution. Today I wish to share a few of them with you.

Lessons from BYU’s History

The first lesson one learns in reviewing BYU’s history concerns the extraordinary faith of the early Saints who forged this institution. They founded Brigham Young Academy in a desert with a fragile economic base. However, they understood the importance of education, especially for their children, and were willing to sacrifice every temporal asset they had in order to keep the school alive. This was true of the faculty and staff and also of the citizens throughout the valley. It was not uncommon for Karl G. Maeser and his staff to receive less than one-half pay during the 1880s. Abraham O. Smoot, a highly successful businessman, stake president, mayor of Provo, and chairman of the board of Brigham Young Academy, gave his buildings, his land, and mortgaged his home in order to save the institution. He died penniless, having given everything to the school.

The faith of BYU’s founders was never stronger than during times of crisis. I was particularly impressed with Karl G. Maeser’s conviction as he responded to Reed Smoot, a student, during the 1884 fire that destroyed the academy’s only building. As it became apparent that they could not save the Lewis building, the student said to Maeser, “Oh, Brother Maeser, the Academy is burned!” Maeser responded, “No such thing, it’s only the building.”² Six years earlier, shortly after the death of Brigham Young, Maeser had a dream in which President Young showed him the design of a new building. At the time Brother Maeser did not understand the purpose of the dream. Six years later, as he looked at the charred ruins of Lewis Hall, he could see in his mind’s eye the building that would take its place.³

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Bateman, Merrill J. “Gathered in the Tops of the Mountains”. 7 Sep 1999. BYU Speeches. 21 Oct 2009. See BYU Broadcasting for a PDF of the talk.↩
Ernest L. Wilkinson and W. Cleon Skousen, Brigham Young University: A School of Destiny (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1976), 74–75.↩
See ibid., 118–19.↩

Spiritual Knowledge

October 11, 2009 in Education by Greg | No comments

In 1993, Richard G. Scott spoke about acquiring spiritual knowledge at BYU’s Campus Education Week. In beginning his talk, Elder Scott asked, “Why center on spiritual knowledge?” to which he responded by quoting Spencer W. Kimball:

Spiritual learning takes precedence. The secular without the foundation of the spiritual is but like the foam upon the milk, the fleeting shadow.

Do not be deceived! One need not choose between the two . . . for there is opportunity to get both simultaneously; . . .

Secular knowledge, important as it may be, can never save a soul nor open the celestial kingdom nor create a world nor make a man a god, but it can be most helpful to that man who, placing first things first, has found the way to eternal life and who can now bring into play all knowledge to be his tool and servant. (Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, p. 390.)

He also quoted others:

President J. Reuben Clark observed:

There is spiritual learning just as there is material learning, and the one without the other is not complete; yet, speaking for myself, if I could have only one sort of learning, that which I would take would be the learning of the spirit, because in the hereafter I shall have opportunity in the eternities which are to come to get the other, and without spiritual learning here my handicaps in the hereafter would be all but overwhelming. (CR, April 1934, p. 94.)

President Gordon B. Hinckley stated:

This restored gospel brings not only spiritual strength, but also intellectual curiosity and growth. Truth is truth. There is no clearly defined line of demarcation between the spiritual and the intellectual when the intellectual is cultivated and pursued in balance with the pursuit of spiritual knowledge and strength.

The Lord Almighty, through revelation, has laid a mandate upon this people in these words:

“Seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith” (D&C 88:118). (CR, April 1986, p. 63; also, “Come and Partake,” Ensign, May 1986, p. 48.) . . .

As knowledge unfolds it must be understood, valued, used, remembered, and expanded.

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Progressive Education in America

August 13, 2009 in Education by Greg | No comments

This post is a follow-up to Boyd K. Packer on Humanism in Education. In 1953, Frederick F. DeArmond traced the history of progressive education in America to John Dewey and a dedicated group of Columbia University teachers:

The progressive education movement in America began with the philosopher John Dewey. Dewey and his followers believed that education should be tied more closely to the business of living, and that the schoolroom should be as nearly as possible society in miniature. They held that the natural impulses of children could be given more rein; a child develops best, they claimed, if he tastes a great deal of victory and very little of defeat.

From this beginning there grew up at Teachers College, Columbia University, a small group called the “Frontier Thinkers,” men dedicated to the Dewey doctrine. Conspicuous names in the group were William Heard Kilpatrick, George S. Counts, Goodwin Watson, Jesse Newlon, Harold Rugg, and George W. Hartmann. They were fervent disciples of reform, and their influence was profound.

The reforms they advocated proved heady ideas for inexperienced or inept teachers, and in the hands of school administrators they could all too easily be carried to unwise and perverted extremes. That, in fact, is just what happened. It was John Dewey’s misfortune that the teaching profession followed his innovations not wisely but too well.¹

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DeArmond, Frederick F. “Democracy in the School Room”. 12 Aug 2009. Ludwig von Mises Institute. 13 Aug 2009.↩

Joseph Smith on False Education

July 28, 2009 in Education by Greg | 6 comments

Last week I came across the following quote by Joseph Smith on “false education” from his inaugural address as Mayor of the city of Nauvoo, Illinois.

The following observations in relation to false education, from Alexander’s Messenger, so perfectly accords with my feelings and views on this highly important subject, that I cannot do better than incorporate them in this message,

“Among the changes for the worse, which the world has witnessed within the last century, we include that specious, superficial, incomplete way of doing certain things, which were formerly thought to be deserving of care, labor and attention. It would seem that appearance is now considered of more moment than reality. The modern mode of education is an example in point. Children are so instructed as to acquire a smattering of everything, and as a matter of consequence, they know nothing properly. Seminaries and academies deal out their moral and natural philosophy, their geometry, trigonometry, and astronomy, their chemistry, botany, and mineralogy, until the mind of the pupil becomes a chaos; and like the stomach when it is overloaded with a variety of food, it digests nothing, but converts the superabundant nutriment to poison. This mode of education answers one purpose–it enable people to seem learned; and seemingly, by a great many is thought all sufficient. Thus we are schooled in quackery, and are early taught to regard showy and superficial attainments as most desirable. Every boarding school miss is a Plato in petticoats, without an ounce of that genuine knowledge, that true philosophy, which would enable her to be useful in the world and to escape those perils with which she must necessarily be encompassed. Young people are taught to use a variety of hard terms which they understand but imperfectly–to repeat lessons which they are unable to apply–to astonish their grandmothers with a display of their parrot-like acquisition; but their mental energies are clogged and torpified with a variety of learned lumber, most of which is discarded from the brain long before the possessor knows how to use it. This is the quackery of education.”¹