An LDS Education for LDS Children

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


Part 3: Restoration and Beyond

---

"We are trying an experiment here. We think this school is different from any other university in America. I submit that this campus, with its adjoining buildings, may literally offer a foretaste of heaven.

"[The graduates] will be natural leaders who know how to teach and how to learn. They will have the power to innovate and improve without requiring more of what money can buy. Those graduates . . . will become legendary for their capacity to build the people around them and to add value wherever they serve."

"We are not bound by tradition, nor are we limited to our own understanding or to the wisdom of men. In short, this is a very unusual university."

"May I suggest that Nephi's experience in building that ship is a model for us at . . . as we prepare for and move into the next century. We, too, must build something we have never built before in order to go someplace we have never been before."

Is this not breathtaking? Do we not all want this "foretaste of heaven" for our children? But what university is this?

The quotes refer to BYU-Idaho and appear on the school website. The first was from President Gordon B. Hinckley; "adjoining buildings" refers, at least in part, to the temple. The others are from Elder Henry B. Eyring, President Kim B. Clark, current president of the university, and Elder David A. Bednar respectively. Elder Bendar is the former president of BYU-I. He oversaw the transformation of Rick's college from a two year jr. college to a four-year university.

At an August 2004 BYU-I devotional Elder Bednar spoke of the common characteristics of the 17 Missionary Training Centers around the world. He said the MTCs are "rather isolated geographically and are few in number," missionaries attend "for relatively short periods of time," the instruction is "focused and intense," there is an expected "demeanor and dress code," and most important, they are located near a temple.

He pointed out that BYU-I has these same characteristics, and said:

Brothers and sisters, it should be obvious to all of us that something spiritually significant is taking place in Rexburg, Idaho. The announcement in June of 2000 that Ricks College would become Brigham Young University-Idaho was much more than the establishing of a new baccalaureate degree granting institution. The addition of new faculty and other employees is not simply about covering classes and meeting staffing needs. The construction on and remodeling of this campus are about so much more than new laboratories and classrooms and study areas.

Let me suggest that in Rexburg, Idaho, we are in the process of creating not a missionary training center (MTC), but a Disciple Preparation Center-a DPC. In this special and sacred and set apart place, you and I have access to unparalleled spiritual resources that can assist us in developing and deepening our devotion as disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the primary and most important reason for the existence of Brigham Young University-Idaho and for its sponsorship by and affiliation with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

He also spoke of BYU-I as a temple of learning:

BYU-Idaho, brothers and sisters, is a temple of learning. I have tried to use that phrase carefully so as to not confuse the House of the Lord with a temple of learning. But there are important patterns and parallels between the House of the Lord and temples of learning, with temples of learning referring specifically to the institutions of higher education sponsored by and affiliated with the Church.

These wonderful words raise a question: If BYU-I is to be a Disciple Preparation Center, how would the school want future students to prepare? Are there ways in which BYU-I can help us prepare our 12-18 year old youth? Could there be an outreach of some kind? Would our homes then be Disciple Preparation Center Preparation Centers?

BYU-Provo is very proud of its longtime partnership with the public schools. BYU provides correspondence classes, but they are designed for, and serve a good purpose in, the public schools, and are without religion. LDS youth need something more.

Oh, how we would like gospel-based internet and DVD classes taught by some of the great minds in the church. Since education is a stake responsibility, maybe there could be some support in the form of discussion groups and social activities for the students? Maybe some of the great minds in the stakes could share their testimonies and their life's work with the youth. If we are not "bound by tradition" let's start thinking innovatively.

While the Church leads out at BYU-I, and families work to make their homes DPCs and temples of learning, others are working on private LDS universaries.

In 1996 a group of Latter-day Saints in Virginia announced the opening of a new private LDS university located in a spacious historic building in the little town of Buena Vista. Southern Virginia University offers a "strong general education program in the liberal arts supplemented by 13 majors and 18 minors." Under the direction of President Rodney K. Smith, the university has been extremely successful. It is a small university, and "a good fit for students who want to know and be known by their professors and want to be in an environment that is designed to strengthen their faith. This is a place where students are highly engaged spiritually and intellectually in the classroom and have multiple opportunities to participate in extracurricular activities ranging from the arts to athletics."

The school attracts great faculty and speakers, both locally (it's near Washington D.C.) and from the west. It's also very home-school friendly.

Of great importance is one short sentence in the SVU mission statement: "Southern Virginia University seeks to establish a replicable self-sustaining model of higher education that can serve Latter-day Saints throughout the world." That replication is happening.

On July 23, 2008, the Deseret News carried an article entitled "'Mormon-friendly' colleges planned for Nevada, Nauvoo." The article is about two groups of "educational entrepreneurs" who have announced future openings of private LDS universities, both "based on the business plans of Southern Virginia University."

Evan Ivie, former director of BYU's popular Semester in Nauvoo program, said when the church decided to discontinue the program in 2006, several people expressed interest in providing a college venue for LDS students there based on the region's key role in church history and the fact that the church recently reconstructed the Nauvoo Temple.

"I think there was a strong feeling that good was being done and something additional here would benefit students, faculty and the town. As we've examined church history and seen the goals that the early Saints had of having some kind of academic institution here, we've been touched by their devotion to education and the desire to have that as a centerpiece for the city of Nauvoo. We share in that desire."

The idea of a university being connected to a temple seems to be important in the Lord's plan. The article continues:

Ivie said he's seen "strong interest" among many LDS academics to move to an area "where they can attend a temple and be involved with an academic institution, maybe even teach some classes. There's a natural flow for the kind of people we need for a university here in Nauvoo."

The other school is in Moapa Valley, Nevada. "Ace" Robinson, "a government affairs consultant with longtime experience in Washington" is the chairman of the board for Deseret Valley Academy. "Robison serves as an LDS stake president in Moapa Valley, and said he has felt the pull of the area's "pioneering spirit" in his quest to help build the school."

Vee Wilson, an educator and a Nauvoo University board member, will be the president of the Desert Valley Academy. Wilson spent a year volunteering as Assistant Provost at Southern Virginia University "to gain experience and an understanding 'of what it really takes to make it happen.'" (Replicate, replicate!)

Both Ivie and Robison say they're concerned about young Latter-day Saints who don't get into LDS-owned schools and eventually find themselves outside the church looking in. Ivie said he would like to see "100 LDS colleges spread throughout the country." . . . "We can create the right environment for them, where they don't have atheists and antagonistic teachers and classes and subjects antagonistic to testimony."

[Robinson has] watched more than 80 percent of the high school students in his LDS stake graduate from LDS seminary. Yet after time away from home at school or a job, only about 55 percent of the eligible young men serve an LDS mission. . . . "That's too much of a drop-off. . . . We're here to raise young men who will go out into the world and serve the Lord in the mission field then be faithful in doing whatever they're called to do thereafter, and 55 percent just isn't good enough."

From the Nauvoo University website we learn a little history:

On the 16th day of December, 1840, the charter of the University of the City of Nauvoo, as part of the charter of the City of Nauvoo, was signed by Governor Thomas Carlin of Illinois, having previously passed both houses of the legislative assembly of the state of Illinois. Abraham Lincoln was one of the legislators who voted for the charter.

This university . . . has been known as the "University of the City of Nauvoo", the "University of Nauvoo", but will be incorporated as 'Nauvoo University'. . . .

Joseph Smith stated that the purpose of the University of Nauvoo is to "enable us to teach our children wisdom -- to instruct them in all knowledge, and learning, in the Arts, Sciences and Learned Professions. We hope to make this institution one of the great lights of the world, and by and through it, to diffuse that kind of knowledge which will be of practical utility, and for the public good, and also for private and individual happiness." The reorganized Nauvoo University will use this prophetic pronouncement as its mission statement.

The Desert Valley Academy will be renamed Desert Valley University, and, in keeping with Joseph's call for "practical utility," it has plans to "provide regional leadership in the development of a unique Arid Land Agricultural course of study."

Although these schools aren't even open yet, we can hope for outreach from them too. We ask again, would the great minds and talents in the church please reach out to the youth, teach them what gods-in-training need to know about biology and anatomy and mathematics and engineering and entrepreneuring and servant-leadership - and do it in a way that is replicable (as in front of a video camera)?

Also giving us a glimpse of the road ahead is Oliver DeMille, founder and President of George Wythe College in Cedar City UT. Speaking at our LDS Home Educators Assn. annual conference in 2002, he talked about the emergence of a distinct LDS culture in the coming years and said Elder Neal A. Maxwell had predicted that by the year 2030, if current tends continue, our membership will reach 90 million. He said every culture has a central classic book, as we do; its own unique art, music, literature, philosophy, mathematics, and government, some of which we are just beginning to develop, and its own educational system.

We were provided some clues to that Zion educational system in an interview with President Alvin R. Dyer arranged by Dr. Neil J. Flinders for his graduate students in 1969. President Dyer, then a counselor to President David O. McKay, was asked about a formal education system in Zion. Here are some excerpts from that interview:

President Dyer: . . . . I suppose many have heard me talk about the city of the New Jerusalem and its temple complex composed of 24 temples--buildings which will house various orders of the priesthood. This complex will no doubt be erected to serve administrative purposes in the governing of the earth during the period of the millennium. It is to be noted that in the Plat Plan that was submitted by Oliver Cowdery and Frederick G. Williams under the direction of the Prophet Joseph Smith concerning the city of Zion there were no separate school buildings. This means, and it is suggested too by other writings, that the schools will be in the temples. There are no separate places of worship either, so the temple becomes the house of worship, the school, and the temple. This Is the facility through which the teacher will function in teaching the principles of the gospel and also such things as will need to be taught during the period of the millennium.

Now there will be a vast broadcasting system. Three of the temples have been noted to be the media through which the laws will go forth unto all the quarters of the earth. . . .Undoubtedly there will be many principles and laws of the millennial reign that will be broadcast to people all over the earth that they may conform to the same things that are being conformed to this city. So three of these buildings will be dedicated to an order of priesthood that will broadcast unto the world so that all people will hear the voice at the same time. This will be a marvelous method of teaching.

Question: Since the temple is going to be used for both a school and a worship center and other places of education are apparently not envisioned in this plan, is it likely that in the city of Zion a good deal of the teaching will be done right in the home as some modern educators are now suggesting? Will there be a teaching function over some instruments that could tune into these broadcast centers? Will the home become a place where the child will learn? Some educators even now are beginning to say the school as a building Is really becoming outmoded, and we are going to be able to let the child learn most of what he needs to know right at home.

PresidentDyer: I think that during the millennium we will evolve to that situation. I think that by the end of the millennium, for those who will occupy the celestial kingdom, the home will be the only media of teaching children. Teaching will be through the family. You may note that Jeremiah said that the time will come when no man will teach his neighbor. To me this means the teachings will come fundamentally through the unit of the family. But I think there will be central places where instruction will go forth, directed to the family level. Thus there will no doubt be sources of information for the family. In the family It will be the father and the father's father who will be doing the teaching. In ancient times the fathers were the Instructors, meaning the patriarchal fathers--it will be the same during the millennium.

While the home may become the medium through which these things are taught, there will still have to be sources, and the home will draw upon those sources and upon the Information which they provide. What happens now is that teachers teach children based upon textbooks provided for them to use In the classroom. Who provides the textbooks? Teachers do--that Is, the professionals do. The only difference In the future is the fathers will provide the fathers with this Information rather than teachers In the classroom. There are numerous categories Into which will fit divine information on various subjects. These will concern all the categories that a man would need to know to become perfect.

It seems beyond question that there is a road to a Zion education. All LDS families can benefit by being involved, whether or not their children remain in secular schools. There are many options available to families now - charter schools, cooperative schools, internet schools, part school and part homeschool, and early college enrollment; and surely there is more choice to come. Families will soon have children in all sorts of educational configuations. Perhaps the word "school" will take on a whole new meaning as youth and adults think in terms of lifetime learning, practical utility, and learning as a part of every day.

Brother Flinders had a distinguished teaching career in CES and at BYU. In 1990 he published a 400-page book, Teach The Children: An Agency Approach To Education. The endorsements on the back cover include those from J. Elliot Cameron and Rolfe Kerr, both former Directors of CES, Stephen Covey, and Truman Madsen. Covey said, "This book could be entitled Education in the Millennium or at least Education in Zion. We will restrain ourselves to just two quotes from that book:

Socially manufactured education, such as that provided in conventional schools, can be very helpful; it has its place and importance. But learning in these socially constructed enviornments cannot replace or compete with the richness and flavor of ideal education. Education in any subject that can be provided by parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, and other members of the extended family has a power that is unmatched in socially engineered schooling. Education flowing from the family is potentially the best; all other education is supplementary. Sometimes this supplementary schooling is all we have at our disposal. But that was not the plan or the practice of schooling in the beginning of the human family. (p.364)

A millennial society will emerge in our future; we can either resist or contribute to its development. The basic stewardships that will push this movement into the future reside in each family. Our society will change as our education changes. In the educational contexts of the twenty-first century, individuals from many families must do the creative work. They will need to organize existing resources into the forms, processes, and endeavors that will move soiety into a millennial posture. A generation will be prepared capable of preparing their children to hear and accept Christ at his coming. As this education is firmly established, temporal excellencew in learning will blossom and Zion will increase in beauty and in holiness; her borders will be enlarged, her stakes strengthened, and she will put on her beautiful garments (D&C 82:1-4). And the children will be taught through an agency approach to education. (p. 377)

We too must "build something we have never built before in order to go someplace we have never been before."

<<< Part 1: An LDS Education for LDS Children      <<< Part 2: Educational Apostasy