Topic: Education, Matches 61 quotes.

A . . . fundamental element in the building and in the perpetuity of a great people is the home. “The strength of a nation, especially of a republican nation, is in the intelligent and well-ordered homes of the people.” If and when the time ever comes that parents shift to the state the responsibility of rearing their children, the stability of the nation will be undermined, and its impairment and disintegration will have begun.

Source: President David O. McKay
General Conference, April 1943

Topics: Education

Public Education Not Enough

Dr. Andrew D. White, great scholar, wise diplomat, historian, and the first president of Cornell University, said many years ago that since all the republics of the past have failed, he had made a careful study for the purpose of determining whether in our republic there is any element that did not exist in those republics which have not endured. His conclusion was that the only new and outstanding characteristic of our republic is its public school system and he expressed the view that if our nation is to endure indefinitely it will be because of the broad democratic training and education in our public school system that we are giving to all the citizens of our nation.

But there are those who have strong convictions that public school education alone is not enough to preserve indefinitely and in peace, the life, the liberty and the prosperity of this our beloved country, the United States of America. Many are of the opinion that other elements are necessary. Religion, morality, righteousness! These are elements which must be factors in the make-up of any nation, it is said, if that nation is to endure indefinitely.

Experience has taught that morality is the life of a nation and religion is the life of morality. “Arming a country with guns and tanks and airplanes is not enough,” says Roger W. Babson. Selecting men for the army, the navy and the air force on physical fitness alone will not suffice. “If our defense program is to succeed,” he continues, “the entire country must experience a re-birth, for in the end, only righteousness can save a nation.”

Source: Elder Richard R. Lyman
General Conference, October 1940

Topics: Education; Government, Threats to; Morality

We are an education loving people. I was really amazed to note, from statistics gathered by the Presiding Bishop’s office, as one of the fruits of this marvelous work known as “Mormonism,” that of all the Latter-day Saints between 8 and 18 years of age, only twenty-two have not attended school. I doubt whether such a record can be duplicated by any other people, of the same number, in all the world. Our schools and colleges are crowded to overflowing. I am informed that the Agricultural College of Utah and the University are the two largest institutions of the kind in the United States, when the population is considered. It is proper for this people to be seekers after enlightenment—to be education loving—for the revelations of God declare that we are to “seek out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study, and also by faith.” It is also declared that “The glory of God is intelligence.” I have been wondering to what extent this love for education and this use of education may be mad to sustain the teachings given us by the prophet of God in his address to us yesterday. The great problem before us seems to be how to direct the tremendous power that resides in our educational desire and activity so that our children may become rounded, well informed men and women, not educated in one direction only, but rather so educated that all their powers are developed and strengthened.

The Spiritual Nature A Big Influence In Education

We imagine too often that we can place most of our burdens, with respect to our children, upon the schools; yet, this is not possible, for our public schools are not permitted to teach all that should be taught mankind. As all know, in our free land, there is a provision in the constitution of the United States—perhaps the finest in the constitution—which provides for religious freedom; and in consonance with that constitutional provision, religious instruction is not permitted in our public schools. Since man is not merely physiological, or intellectual, but also spiritual, our schools do not wholly suffice for the full training of man. Yet it is quite as natural for a man to desire religious education as to desire education for his body and mind. This truth is borne out by human experience to such a degree that I have no need to dwell long on it here

Source: Elder John A. Widtsoe
General Conference, October 1922

Topics: Education

We feel that the time has arrived when the proper education of our children should be taken in hand by us as a people. Religious training is practically excluded from the District Schools. The perusal of books that we value as divine records is forbidden. Our children, if left to the training they receive in these schools, will grow up entirely ignorant of these principles of salvation for which the Latter-day Saints have made so many sacrifices. To permit this condition of things to exist among us would be criminal. The desire is universally expressed by all thinking people in the Church that we should have schools where the Bible, the Book of Mormon and the Book of Doctrine and Covenants can be used as text books, and where the principles of our religion may form a part of the teaching of the schools.

Source: President Wilford Woodruff
Revealed Educational Principles and the Public Schools, p.238

Topics: Education

The institution of public education is so universally accepted today that many readers are apt to scoff at the idea that the control of education by government and the use of public funds for its support is contrary to moral law. Before rejecting the idea as absurd, one might ponder these facts...

1) Point number ten of the Communist Manifesto contains the following proposal: Free education for all children in public schools.

2) When public education was first proposed in the state of Utah, the leadership of the Church was unalterably opposed to it.

Source: Elder H. Verlan Andersen
The Book of Mormon and the Constitution, p. 181

Topics: Education

Education, human education, is the leading out and lifting up of the soul into the ripe, full enjoyment of all its powers potential. To educate men and women is to put them in full command of themselves, to completely possess them of their faculties, which are only half possessed until they are educated. Education imparts nothing but discipline and development. It does not increase the number of man’s original talents; it adds nothing to the sum of his inherent capabilities, but it improves those talents, it develops and strengthens those capabilities, brightening what is dull, making the crude fine, the clumsy skillful, the small great, and the great still greater. Education supplements creation, and moves next to it in the order of infinite progression.

Source: Orson F. Whitney
“The School of Life,” Millennial Star 67, no. 32 (10 August 1905): 499.

Topics: Education

What is education? ... It is the expansion of the soul—the body and the spirit—to the fulness of its capacity. It is the cultivation and the highest possible development of the natural faculties; the bringing forth and perfecting of all the inherent powers of the individual. This is the definition of a perfect education, and it is the limit and index of its capabilities. . . .

Perfect education . . . is the full and uniform development of the mental, the physical, the moral and the spiritual faculties. The cultivation of the intellect, as said, is but one phase of the subject, and not by any means the most important one. Useful and valuable though it [may] be as a branch of education, it is of secondary consideration compared with other departments of that vast system of development by means of which, as an entirety, it is alone possible for the human mind and soul to be perfectly educated. This may not be a popular view, but I am satisfied it is the correct one. Those persons who bestow every care and attention upon their minds, and who seem to have but one thought, How shall I shine in society, or make a financial success in the world? are egregiously in error if they think they are gaining the best part of life’s experience, or securing the education of which they have most reason to be proud.

Many of them, if they were wise enough to see it, are not doing justice even to their mental faculties. No one who reads a book simply to be able to chatter about its contents; who witnesses a play, or inspects a work of art, for the mere purpose of saying he has seen it; who journeys to foreign lands with no object in view but to boast of having been there; who lives in fact for show and glitter and not for usefulness and truth, can truly be said to be educated, even intellectually. The magpie and the parrot have an almost equal claim.

Source: Orson F. Whitney
“What Is Education?” Contributor 6 (June 1885): 345, 349-50.

Topics: Education

Many of you may have heard what certain journalists have had to say about Brigham Young being opposed to free schools. I am opposed to free education as much as I am apposed to taking away property from one man and giving it to another who knows not how to take care of it. But when you come to the fact, I will venture to say that I school ten children to every one that those do who complain so much of me. I now pay the school fees of a number of children who are either orphans or sons and daughters of poor people. But in aiding and blessing the poor I do not believe in allowing my charities to go through the hands of a set of robbers who pocket nine-tenths themselves, and give one-tenth to the poor. Therein is the difference between us; I am for the real act of doing and not saying. Would I encourage free schools by taxation? No! That is not in keeping with the nature of our work; we should be as one family, our hearts and hands united in the bonds of everlasting covenant; our interests alike, our children receiving equal opportunities in the school-room and the college. We have to-day, more children between the ages of 5 and 20 years, who can read and write, then any State or Territory of the Union of a corresponding number of inhabitants.

Source: Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses, Vol.18, p.357, April 6, 1877

Topics: Education

One of the greatest threats to the work of the Lord today comes from false educational ideas. There is a growing tendency of teachers within and without the church to make academic interpretations of gospel teachings - to read, as a prophet leader has said, ‘by the lamp of their own conceit.’ Unfortunately, much in the sciences, the arts, politics and the entertainment field, as has been well said by an eminent scholar, ‘all dominated by this humanistic approach which ignores God and his word as revealed through the prophets.’ This kind of worldly system apparently hopes to draw men away from God by making man the ‘measure of all things’ as some worldly philosophers have said.

Source: President Harold B. Lee
Conference Report 10/68 p. 59.

Topics: Education

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