Education

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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

Karl G Maeser 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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  1. 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.↩
  2. Ernest L. Wilkinson and W. Cleon Skousen, Brigham Young University: A School of Destiny (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1976), 74–75.↩
  3. 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:

Olive_Tree 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:

John Dewey 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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  1. 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 | 5 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.

No_Child_Left_Behind 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

This quote reminded me of Hugh Nibley’s comments about Careerism and BYU and seems to be a persistent theme.

Sources:

  1. Isackson, Darla. “Education Series – Part 4”. Undated. Meridian Magazine. 25 July 2009.↩

Boyd K. Packer on Humanism and Education

July 26, 2009 in Education by Greg | 5 comments

I have wanted to post these two quotes by Boyd K. Packer on humanism and education for quite some time. In 1994, President Packer said:

Humanism_Symbol Like a ship without a rudder, without a compass, we drift from the family values which have anchored us in the past. Now we are caught in a current so strong that unless we correct our course, civilization as we know it will surely be wrecked to pieces. Moral values are being neglected and prayer expelled from public schools on the pretext that moral teaching belongs to religion. At the same time, atheism, the secular religion, is admitted to class, and our youngsters are proselyted to a conduct without morality.1

The second quote comes from a talk Pres. Packer gave at BYU in 1996:

In many places it is literally not safe physically for youngsters to go to school. And in many schools and its becoming almost generally true it is spiritually unsafe to attend public schools. Look back over the history of education to the turn of the century and the beginning of the educational philosophies. Pragmatism and humanism were the early ones, and they branched out into a number of other philosophies which have led us now into a circumstance where our schools are producing the problems that we face.”2

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  1. Packer, Boyd K. “The Father and the Family”. May 1994. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 25 July 2009.↩
  2. Packer, Boyd K. Charge to the David O. McKay School of Education. December 1996.↩

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