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

We are not only to teach purely gospel subjects by the power of the Spirit. We are also to teach secular subjects by the power of the Spirit, and we are obligated to interpret the content of secular subjects in the light of revealed truth. This purpose is the only sufficient justification for spending Church money to maintain this institution [BYU].

Source: Elder Marion G. Romney
“Temples of Learning,” BYU annual university conference, September 1966

Topics: Uncategorized

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

During the past several years many of our institutions of learning have been turning out an increasing number of students schooled in amorality, relativity, and atheism — students divested of a belief in God, without fixed moral principles or an understanding of our constitutional republic and our capitalistic, free enterprise economic system. This follows a pattern which was established years ago at some of our key colleges that produced many of the teachers and leaders in the educational field across the country today. The fruits of this kind of teaching have been tragic, not only to the souls of the individuals involved, but also to the parents, and even to our country. . . . The whole process can be quite insidious. Young people know that the best jobs are available to college graduates. They want to do well at school. When exam time comes, they must give back to the teacher what the teacher wants. Now under the guise of academic freedom — which some apparently feel is freedom to destroy freedom — some teachers reserve to themselves the privilege of teaching error, destroying faith in God, debunking morality, and depreciating our free economic system. If questions reflecting the teacher’s false teachings appear on the exam, how will the student answer who believes in God and morality and our Constitution? ...The problem arises when under the pressure of a heavy course of study and the necessity of parroting back what certain professors have said, the student does not have the time or take the time to learn the truth. If he does not learn the truth, someday he will suffer the consequences. Many an honest student, after graduation, has had to do some unlearning and then fresh learning of basic principles which never change and which he should have been taught initially. . . .

Source: Ezra Taft Benson
Conference Report, Oct 1964 p. 56-59)

Topics: Uncategorized

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

We had to pay our own schoolteachers, raise our own bread and earn our own clothing, or go without; there was no other choice. We did it then, and we are able to do the same to-day. I want to enlist the sympathies of the ladies among the Latter-day Saints, to see what we can do for ourselves with regard to schooling our children. Do not say you cannot school them, for you can... I understand that the other night there was a school meeting in one of the wards of this city, and a part there—a poor miserable apostate—said, “We want a free school, and we want to have the name of establishing the first free school in Utah.” To call a person a poor miserable apostate may seem like a harsh word; but what shall we call a man who talks about free schools and who would have all the people taxed to support them, and yet would take his rifle and threaten to shoot the man who had the collection of the ordinary light taxes levied in this Territory—taxes which are lighter than any levied in any other portion of the country?

Source: Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses, Vol.16, p.19 - p.20

Topics: Uncategorized

I give it as my opinion that you may go to any part of the United States or the world, where parents are not obliged by law to send their children to school, and you will find more schools in the midst of this people, notwithstanding their poverty, their drivings, sufferings, and persecutions, and more persons that can read and write, in proportion to our population, than in any other place on this earth. You may select any community of the same number, and in this particular we will favourably compare with the best of them, and I think we are ahead of them.

Source: Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses, Vol.8, p.40, April 8, 1860

Topics: Uncategorized

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