An LDS Education for LDS Children

..............................................................................Part 1: An LDS Education for LDS Children
..............................................................................Part 2: Educational Apostasy
..............................................................................Part 3: Restoration and Beyond


Part 2: Educational Apostasy

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From the beginning, education in the Restoration was religious. The scriptures were basic schoolbooks, together with a few books that had been written by church leaders. The adults were very involved in learning as well, especially when classes were held in the Kirtland temple and in Nauvoo. But the Adversary was not asleep. His philosophies were introduced by Horace Mann on the East coast and washed across the country, catching up with the Saints in the Utah Territory. President Brigham Young was faced with Saints who wanted tax supported schools and professional, non-LDS teachers. We can feel Brigham's frustration with these ideas:

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 opposed to taking 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 fee 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! - H. Verlan Andersen, The Book of Mormon and the Constitution, p. 192

Are you going to pay [a Gentile school teacher] for his good looks? That is what some of our bishops want to do. If they can get a man, no matter what his moral qualities may be, whose shirt front is well starched and ironed, they will say -"Bless me, you are a delightful little man! What a smooth shirt you have got, and you have a ring on your finger-you are going to teach our school for us." And along comes a stalwart man, axe in hand, going to shop wood, and, if he asks, "Do you want a school teacher?" though he may know five times more than the dandy, he is told, "No, no, we have one engaged." I want to cuff you bishops back and forth until you get your brains turned right side up.
- John D. Monnett, Revealed Educational Principles and the Public Schools, p19

(The ideas being promulgated by Mann were those of the Prussian school system. We might wonder why anyone in that this land of Liberty would be attracted to a militaristic pattern of education. We should wonder, and we should find out! Our children live in this system every day, and our culture is awash with it.)

This battle raged for years, as Church leaders tried to keep the adult children of the Saints from educational apostasy. Here is just one sample, from John Taylor:

Well, shall we, after going to the ends of the earth to gather people to Zion, in order that they may learn more perfectly of His ways and walk in His paths, shall we then allow our children to be at the mercy of those who would lead them down to death again? God forbid! Let our teachers be men of God, men of honor and integrity, and let us afford our children such learning as will place our community in the front ranks in educational as well as religious matters. But would we interfere with other religious denominations? No. Prevent them from sending their children where and to whom they please? No. Or from shipping where they please? No. I would not put a hair in their way, nor interfere with them in any possible way; they can take their course, and we want the same privilege.
- John Taylor, Journal of Discourses, .19:.249 - 50, October 21, 1877

In 1888, after Territorial government took over the Utah government, including the schools, and removed all LDS teachers, President Woodruff responded by asking the stake presidents to open private Church schools in their stakes. It mattered to Wilford Woodruff. When the Territorial government took control of the territorial schools in the 1880's and LDS teachers were ousted, he called for the establishment of private church schools in each stake of the Church. In a June 1888 Circular letter sent to all stake 25 or so stake presidents, President Woodruff said:

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 those 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.
- Circular letter, June 8, 1888, quoted in Jack Monnett, Revealed Educational Principles and the Public School System, p. 238

The School Board said church schools were "one of the most important factors in establishing the kingdom of God upon the earth" (Monnett, p. 120), but the Saints didn't see it. They really longed to have "free" schools."

When the legislature passed the Free Education Act of 1890, President George Q. Cannon wrote:

It will be a great temptation to many people to send their children to the free schools that will now be supported by our taxes, but of what value is learning if it is acquired at the expense of faith."
- Monnett, p.154

He tried again in the Juvenile Instructor:

There are parents who are very favorable to their children receiving education, but appear to be indifferent as to the character of the teaching which they receive. They do not seem to place any value on their children being taught the principles of their religion. Apparently, therefore, they would as soon their children be taught in schools or colleges where religion is entirely ignored as in an academy taught by Latter-day Saints.. . . the Latter-day Saints have forsaken everything for their religion. They have been willing to die for it. . . . how persons who have had these feelings concerning religion in their own case can be so careless as to expose their children to infidelity seems a great mystery.
- Monnett, p.161

Tempting it was. Enrollment in church schools peaked at about 10%. The Church was soon forced to give up and close most of the schools. We wonder if President Woodruff saw the Lord's tears as Enoch had (Moses 7). <
Not only was this a sad commentary against the Saints, it was an embarrassment to their leaders. Their enemies, however, were elated. Commissioner Jacob Boreman reported:

These efforts of the Mormon Church are necessarily causing divisions among the membership of the church upon educational matters. This, however, is a healthful sign, as is every act which causes the people to think for themselves. It creates and develops individual independence. The outlook is indeed encouraging.
- Monnett, p 187

Jack Monnett wrote:

When it became clear that church members were more comfortable with an education program "like all the nations," (1 Sam 8:5) and were not willing to sacrifice or separate themselves from those around them, plans were made to once again work with Latter-day Saint youth in public schools. It was awkward because the Brethren had been vocal about the differences of public and church education and had pointed out public school weaknesses. Previously, President Cannon had asked the Saints, "of what value is learning if it is acquired at the expense of faith?" He spoke to church educators and observed that "Although infidelity is not directly taught in the public schools, its spirit is fostered by the exclusion of religious education." In the summer of 1891, recognizing that a partnership had to be forged in order to continue teaching LDS youth, he said: "The district schools must be patronized by the Latter-day Saints for many reasons; they are supported, to a large extent, by the taxes of the Latter-day Saints, and it would be well for the children to be trained in those schools at least up to their twelfth year; as it is supposed that this can be done without endangering their faith. Again, we have been accused of being opposed to education and the district school system, and we must not give our traducers the shadow of a foundation on which to rest their charges."
- Monnett, p 192-3

Never again would the Church attempt to open elementary or high schools in the United States. They put the matter of education squarely into the hands of the parents. It would be up to the parents now to figure out how to protect their children from spiritual and educational apostasy.

Church leaders did, however work hard to build bridges with the public schools so that religious classes could be allowed after school. At first the classes were for weekly for elementary students; eventually they became the Seminary program.

After Utah was granted statehood in late 1895, with provision for compulsory education, things settled down. For decades the Saints were happy in their small, predominantly LDS towns, with their nice schoolhouses next door to their churches. The communities were predominantly LDS and everyone knew each other. The Superintendent sat on the stand in Stake Conferences. The teachers often lived in the same town and went to the same ward as their students. Mothers cooked large pots of soup and hauled them to the school in wagons for lunch. Life revolved around the church and the school. The Saints thought of their school system almost as a church auxiliary.

Church leaders kept a careful watch, however, and eventually the world began to encroach again. Apostle Ezra Taft Benson was one of the watchmen on the tower. At the encouragement of President McKay, he took leave from the Quorum in 1952 to serve for eight years in Washington D.C. as Secretary of Agriculture to U. S. President Eisenhower. He learned governmental affairs well, and he gave many warnings, including these from the book, The Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson:

As the educational system falls into the hands of the in-power political faction or into the hands of an obscure but tightly knit group of professional social reformers, it is used not to educate but to indoctrinate. . . . (p. 297)

There is absolutely nothing in the Constitution which authorized the federal government to enter into the field of education. . . . (p. 298)

President Joseph F. Smith aid that one of the things that plagued the Church within was false educational ideas . . . . (p.303)

Our educational system must be based on freedom - never on force . . . . (p. 318)

The precepts of man have gone so far in subverting our educational system that in many cases a higher degree today, in the so-called social sciences, can be tantamount to a major investment in error. Very few men build firmly enough on the rock of revelation to go through this kind of indoctrination and come out untainted. (p. 319)

From the fifth grade through the fourth year of college, our young people are being indoctrinated with a Marxist philosophy, and I am fearful of the harvest. The younger generation is further to the left than most adults realize. The old concepts of our Founding Fathers are scoffed and jeered at by young moderns whose goals appear to be the destruction of integrity and virtue, and the glorification of pleasure, thrills, and self-indulgence. (p. 320-321)

. . . . if it is consistently and persistently carried out in all parts of the country, the United States system of national popular education will be the most efficient and widespread instrument for the propagation of atheism which the world has ever seen. (p. 307)

If the refusal of the Saints to support the Church school system was the first apostasy, the second was a national apostasy at the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court. After a 1962 decision on school prayer, Apostle Benson said:

After the tragic prayer decision was made by the United States Supreme Court, President David O. McKay stated, "The Supreme Court of the United States severs the connecting cord between the public schools of the United States and the source of divine intelligence, the Creator Himself" (Relief Society Magazine, December 1962, p. 878). Does that make any difference to you? Can't you see why the demand of conscientious parents is increasing the number of private Christian and Americanist-oriented schools?
- Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson, p. 308

The Benson children would become very involved in both private schooling and in homeschooling, a movement that began in the mid-1970's. In 1981 Reed Benson, the apostle's son, wrote the first dissertation in the nation on homeschooling, at BYU, based partly on his own family's experience, that year being their first venture into homeschooling. His dissertation was highly read, and in the 1980's and 90's he spoke at homeschool conferences all over the country, which helped families tremendously. He called homeschooling a "family-saving movement."

President Boyd K. Packer, the great educator, was also watching the Supreme Court decision with concern. He said:

Just a year after I had been called as a General Authority, I saw President McKay very agitated. I had not seen him that way before. We were in a meeting in the temple with all of the General Authorities in October 1962, prior to the general conference. When President McKay came in, he was obviously very agitated. When it came his time to speak, he told us that the Supreme Court had made a decision announcing the prohibition of prayer in the public schools. He said then and after in a public meeting, by that decision "the Supreme Court of the United States severs the connecting cord between the public schools of the United States and the source of divine intelligence, the Creator himself, 'in whom we move and have our being.'" President McKay further declared (and I quote), "The ruling is surprising, when we realize that the noblest purpose of the public schools as a function of government should be to teach loyalty and obedience to the laws of our country." . . . That statement and his anxiety was prophetic of what has come now and the drift that we have seen.

In many places it is literally not safe physically for youngsters to go to school. And in many schools--and it's 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.
- David O. McKay Symposium, BYU, Oct. 9, 1996

President Packer had brought up Ms. O'Hair's lawsuit on prayer when he presented the baccalaureate sermon at Utah State University in 1973. He entitled his remarks "What Every Freshman Should Know" because he wanted the students to consider that their faith might have been lost during college by the teachings of some of their atheist teachers. He said:

She wanted to protect her son from any contact with religion. Her son is protected from my type of religion-my son is exposed to hers.

There is a crying need for the identification of atheism for what it is, and that is, a religion-albeit a negative one, nevertheless it is a religious expression. It is the one extreme end of the spectrum of thought concerning the causation of things. . . .

I submit that the atheist has no more right to teach the fundamentals of his sect in the public school than does the theist. Any system in the schools or in society that protects the destruction of faith and forbids, in turn, the defense of it must ultimately destroy the moral fiber of the people.

Is any lesson more abundantly clear in our present society? We are coming apart at the seams. Anyone can see that. Just read any newspaper any day. Evil has unclothed herself and walks the streets in brazen, impudent defiance.
- Ensign, Sep 1973, p.32

Two decades later, in the April 1994 Conference, he said:

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.....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...The distance between the church and a world set on a course which we cannot follow will steadily increase.

President Hinckley certainly knew what the Supreme Court had done. In a lighthearted interview with the press, he was asked by a reporter if he thought it appropriate to have prayer in public schools. He replied:

In the public schools? I don't know whether I want to comment on that. I think we may have taken a terrible step backwards some years ago, and I don't know whether we'll recover from it. . . .
- Deseret News, March 8, 2000

He had previously said:

What has happened to our schools? There are still many that are excellent, but there are very many that are failing. What has become of the teaching of values? We are told that educators must be neutral in these matters. Neutrality in the teaching of values can only lead to an absence of values. Is it less important to learn something of honesty than to learn something of computer science?. . . . Where today are the heroes from whose lives we learned honesty and integrity and the meaning of work? The debunkers of Washington and Lincoln have done their job and we all are the poorer for it.
- U.S. Conference of Mayors, Salt Lake City, Utah, September 25, 1998

Some members were concerned and longed for church schools for their children. By 1976 the official position, approved by the Church Board of Education and mailed to inquiring members, began:

The challenges facing the public schools in some areas have led some concerned parents to ask about the possibility of creating a Church-operated school system. However, the Church cannot undertake to provide a comprehensive school system as an alternative to the public schools where those schools, despite their deficiencies, are open and available to Latter-day Saint children and have seminaries or institutes of religion adjacent to them. Furthermore, there are a variety of private schools which parents may consider when in their judgment the public schools do not fulfill the educational needs of their children.

The letter then quotes a five-paragraph 1968 statement from the First Presidency which was originally written to the general body of Saint to encouraging them to be "anxiously engaged" in any community causes. It included this sentence:

With our wide ranging mission, so far as mankind is concerned, Church members cannot ignore the many practical problems that require solution if our families are to live in an environment conducive to spirituality."

The 1976 letter concludes with this paragraph:

The public schools, then, have played and are playing, an important role in the education of Latter-day Saint children. They are not perfect and the past decade has been a particularly trying time for many of them. But many of the problems they face are not without solution, and certainly are not reasons for the Church to withdraw its traditional support for a strong public school system.

That support and the warm, fuzzy feelings most members still had for their public schools was strong enough, that when a small number of Church families began homeschooling in the mid-1970's, most people thought it was an act of apostasy. In their minds, the public schools system was a church auxiliary, and they looked with suspicion upon anyone anyone making a different choice.

The official position today for both private and homeschooling remains strict neutrality. The church takes no position but leaves the education up to the parents. Support for the public schools continues, as it should -- we want the best for those students who will be attending them -- however, church leaders have never stopped issuing warnings to parents. Today the families of many bishops, stake presidents, and general authorities are involved in homeschooling.

Knowing this background, and recognizing that we live in a world wide church with many members in countries without freedom of educational choice, we would not expect to hear words of comfort for homeschoolers over the pulpit. But we can read between the lines. Whatever the speaker's personal feelings about education might be, much of the counsel they are giving us will be more easily followed if we can remove ourselves from the long school day. As the letter quoted above said, we "cannot ignore the many practical problems that require solution if our families are to live in an environment conducive to spirituality."

If our children walk and talk in the paths of an apostate educational system day after day, even with the best teachers, where do we find the time and ability to re-educate them to the Lord's ways?

In terms of your happiness, in terms of the matters that make you proud or sad, nothing--I repeat, nothing--will have so profound an effect on you as the way your children turn out.
- President Gordon B. Hinckley, Gen Conf, Oct 2000

The law of the harvest is nowhere more in evidence and nowhere more relentless than in family gardens!
- Elder Neal A. Maxwell, Gen Conf, April 1994

There is not a way in the world that our children are going to go to school and not hear about every kind of possible perversion imaginable. I would rather be the one to teach them about the family and marriage than to have them persuaded by their classmates, or a teacher, or somebody in a dark corner somewhere.
- Sheri L. Dew, Interfaith Conference, D.C. Temple, Feb 24, 2004

NOTES:

1. The story of educational apostasy in education in Utah is best told by Jack Monnett in his book Revealed Educational Principles and the Public Schools , available in our bookstore. Also available is John Taylor, Educator.

2. The story of Horace Mann's introduction of the Prussian Education System is told in the book The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto. The book can be read online for free. A search for Gatto on the internet will bring you to many talks and audios.

3. A short slide presentation about the " US adoption of Prussian schooling is available on Wikipedia; scroll down on the page.

4. A fascinating article in The BYU Law Journal tells about a campaign headed by former Civil War General Richard Henry Pratt to re-socialize American Indians through compulsory military-type schooling. The article was written by two homeschoolers, Dan Witte and Paul Mero.

5. The Book of Mormon and the Constitution, was written by Elder H. Verlan Andersen, who was called as a Seventy by President Benson.

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