Education for Eternity

We talk about a great many of the departments of the Church, of its various organizations, and quorums, but we have often neglected to mention one of the very important and influential departments that it sustains. I refer to the Department of Education. ¶

Living of Gospel Brings Better Temporal Conditions ¶

This people has always been a people that believed in the enlightenment of its members. Wherever the gospel has been carried by the missionaries of this Church, there has been an endeavor to raise the level of knowledge and understanding of its members. When our emissaries have gone to the islands of the seas, they have built schoolhouses, they have taught the natives, they have tried to let light into their minds, and have tried to make them better. In every way they have tried to improve the spiritual, mental, and temporal conditions of peoples they have gone among. ¶

We could not be satisfied, as a people, with our ideals, to remain unacquainted with the learning of the day. We could not be satisfied to be classed among the ignorant, and neither would it conduce to our general temporal welfare if we did that. ¶

The farmer is a better farmer if he knows something about the science of agriculture. We have conquered pests; we have saved millions through the learning that our people have acquired. You men sitting here do not have to think back very far to remember the day when your sugar factories could not run because a little insect destroyed the beets. Those insects were conquered because men came to learn how to produce a seed that would yield a beet that could resist the onslaught of this little pest. ¶

Great acres of the land of this state have been brought into fertility and have produced the wherewithal to sustain life, because certain chemists studied in their laboratories and learned the secret of making these lands productive, and of producing the kinds of seeds that would thrive in our climate. ¶

Important Objectives in Education ¶

We believe in learning. Every time I have to do anything, I know that I could do it better if I only knew more. The limit of my power is the limit of my knowledge and understanding; if I can extend the scope of these, I can grow in power, because truly, knowledge is power. ¶

But we would not at this time have set up schools in the Church to teach some of these things that I have been talking about. There were times in our earlier history when all the educational advantages offered were those that were fostered by the Church. With the growth of the state in population and wealth, it has assumed the responsibility now for a great deal of that kind of instruction. ¶

But there are other things that ought to go side by side with these elements of learning that I have been talking about. It is an interesting observation, the cycle through which our thoughts have run and the way the pendulum has swung from one end of the arc to the other, respecting what constitutes a proper education. We have the old scholastics, who dealt in the classics, and who spent their time in philosophical discussion, dealing with the meaning and purpose of life and man's relationship to the universe, rather than with what we have in this day come to regard as the more practical training. ¶

Then we came upon a period when we thought it was more important in our educational system to prepare men to make a living and so education came to be supposed to have as its purpose the training of men in the art of making a living. We gave training in the crafts, in the trades, and now a good many of our educators are looking over the field and are saying: "We have lost something." They suspect that we have laid too much emphasis upon these so-called practical things. And so we are veering around again now to the notion that the classics should be taught, that men should be concerned more with the intangibles; that education is a business of cultivating the heart and soul of man, rather than training him in the mere business of providing food. ¶

Education as a Teacher of Man's Relationship to God ¶

While the pendulum has been swinging from one extreme of educational theory to the other, the Church has had a fairly stabilized view combining the virtues of both. The basic conception upon which our system is elaborated is found in section 88 of the Doctrine and Covenants, from which I now read: Teach ye diligently and my grace shall attend you, that you may be instructed more perfectly in theory, in principle, in doctrine, in the law of the gospel, in all things that pertain unto the kingdom of God, that are expedient for you to understand; Of things both in heaven and in the earth, and under the earth; things which have been, things which are, things which must shortly come to pass; things which are at home, things which are abroad; the wars and the perplexities of the nations, and the judgments which are on the land; and a knowledge also of countries and of kingdoms. . . . (D. & C. 88:78, 79.) ¶

As I interpret that scripture, it admonishes us in our educational system, first to make sure that we do the things for which the classicists have so strongly contended, namely to teach men in the art of living, and particularly living the highest philosophy rather than to make education the mere instrumentality for getting their bread and butter. The first business of education is to establish a proper understanding of man's relationship to the universe in which he lives, and to the God who created it. Those are the things which are essentially laid down here, in the first verse that I have read. ¶

Following upon that is given us a latitude wide enough to accommodate the most vaulting ambition. There is nothing from which we are barred. The whole wide world of knowledge is open to us, and we are invited to enter in and make it our own. It is this combination of purpose and attainments which the educational system fostered by the Church is intended to carry out. ¶

We have scores of teachers in our seminaries and our institutes, carrying on the teaching of the eternal values to supplement what is taught in the other schools alongside of which they are placed. And at Brigham Young University at Provo, standing at the head of the system, we hope we may train the men that will be the peers of any men who come out from any institutions of learning in all this broad land. ¶

Influence of Good Teachers Needed ¶

Something has been said of the sacrifices which the Authorities of the Church make in accepting the positions that come to them. These teachers make their sacrifices, too. The amount of time and energy which they devote, and the intelligent effort they put forth in order to qualify themselves, would, turned into other channels, be vastly more remunerative. ¶

Anyone who has the intelligence to make a good teacher has enough intelligence, if he wanted to direct it in commercial channels, to become vastly more successful financially. I cannot develop the ideas here, for want of time, that I would like to develop, but I would like to make this plea to you leaders in the wards and stakes of the Church: That you induce the parents of the children to make use of these opportunities that are afforded them in the seminary system and the institute system of the Church and, for those qualified, in its university. ¶

There is no use of our building buildings and manning them with teachers, unless students fill the halls. We are living in a day when the influence and power of those men, specialized in their training and understanding, is needed to assist in the matter of development of character and the nurturing of a living faith in our boys and girls, if we will just put them under the influences that are provided for their convenience. Above all a conviction concerning the purpose of life and their own eternal destiny realizable through righteous living and conformance to laws of God should be given to the youth of our time. ¶

May God bless these teachers in their unselfish efforts, their earnest devotion, and their untiring endeavors to make the kind of men and women of our boys and girls that we would like to have them be, I pray in the name of Jesus. Amen. ¶