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McKay School of Education > EDLF > Archives > Prophets > Schools 1967

Schools 1967

John H. Vandenberg, CR, October 1967, p.77-78
There are further comments that advise us that economic factors indirectly play a part in the absence of parental discipline. Working mothers are not at home during most of the day, and they are unaware of what their children are doing before or after school hours or with whom they are associating. Usually when the working mother is at home, her waking hours are filled with the usual domestic chores of washing, ironing, and general household duties. The school, therefore, during five days of supervision each week, must play a serious part in teaching morality. Admittedly, this is a poor substitute for a mother's duty, and the evidence stares at us.

Sorrow and unfulfillment will lie at the end of the career of a working mother who has neglected her family. While it is understood that some mothers must work because of no other income coming to the home, there should be no excuse for supplementing the husband's income for the purchase of so-called luxuries and conveniences.
David O. McKay, CR, April 1968, p.90-94
Education to be complete must include spiritual growth. In this sense, youth need religion.
I shall offer only three reasons this evening for giving proper religious training to youth.

First: Youth should have religion in order to stabilize society. Goethe has rightly said that "the destiny of any nation at any given time depends on the opinions of its young men under five and twenty."

On this same thought, Roger W. Babson many years ago had the foresight to comment as follows:

"Although the airplane opens up boundless opportunities, it also threatens limitless perils. All depends upon whether we can match this flood of new material powers with an equal gain in spiritual forces. The coming generation can see in a minute more than the former generation could see in a week. The coming generation can out-hear and out-travel the former generation. Horsepower has expanded beyond all dreams. But what about man power? What about spiritual power, and the power of judgment, discretion, and self-control? Unless there is a development of character equal to this enlargement of physical forces, there is sure trouble ahead. Twenty-five years ago, an intoxicated man might tip the buggy over, but commonly the old horse would bring him home. Today, a driver under the influence of liquor, maims and kills. Tomorrow, therefore, is something to ponder over. Without moral progress, in pace with physical progress, the airplane will merely make dissipation more disastrous, immorality more widespread, and crime more efficient. As one result of the automobile has been to put hell on wheels, the airplane will put hell on wings unless righteousness, too, is speeded up. On the development of character depends whether the airplane shall bring prosperity or calamity." (Forum, April 1931.)

Science, says Millikan, "without religion obviously may become a curse rather than a blessing to mankind. But science dominated by the spirit of religion is the key, to progress and the hope of the future.

Hayden gives a similar warning, as follows: "Today, as seldom if ever before, human society is threatened with disintegration, if not complete chaos." Why? "All the ancient evils of human relationships, injustice, selfishness, abuse of strength, become sinister and terrible when reinforced by the vast increase of material power. The soul of man cowers, starved and fearful, in the midst of a civilization grown too complex for any mind to visualize or to control. Joy and beauty fade from human living. Yet life abundant, beauteous, laughing life has been our age-long labor's end. What other conceivable worth has the mastery of the material world, the exploitation of the resources of nature and the creation of wealth, except as a basis for the release of the life of the spirit?" And then he adds: "We are witnessing either the crumbling of civilization under the weight of its material mechanism, or the birth of a new organization with a spiritual ideal."

So much for the relation of religion to the stabilizing of society.

Second: Youth need religion to satisfy the innate longing of the soul. Man is a spiritual being, and sometime or another every man is possessed with a longing, an irresistible desire, to know his relationship to the Infinite. He realizes that he is not just a physical object to be tossed for just a short time from bank to bank, only to be submerged finally in the ever-flowing stream of life. There is something within him that urges him to rise above himself, to control his environment, to master the body and all things physical, and to live in a higher and more beautiful world.

James Russell Lowell, in his tribute to spring, says:

"Every clod feels a stir of might,
An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
And groping blindly above it for light,
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers."

So there is in man not only an instinct, but also a divinity that strives to push him onward and upward. The sense is universal, and at some time in his life every man is conscious of possessing it.

Associated with this spiritual urge are three great needs that remain unchanged throughout the centuries: (1) Every normal person yearns to know something of God. What is he like? Is he interested in the human family, or does he disregard it entirely? (2) What is the best life to live in this world in order to be most successful and to get the most happiness? (3) What is that inevitable thing called death? What is beyond it?

If you want your answers to these longings of the human soul, you must come to the Church to get it. Only true religion can satisfy the yearning soul. At this point, we approach the border line between science and religion. The line between the cold facts of science and the revelation of the spirit is so fine that students need to contact a mind that can and will lead them from the real, the practical, into that realm which satisfies the soul.

Third: Youth need religion to comply properly with the purposes of creation. There is a purposeful design permeating all nature, the crowning event of which is man. Here, on this thought, science again leads the student up to a certain point, and sometimes leaves him with his soul unanchored. For example, evolution's theory of the creation of the world offers many perplexing problems to the inquiring mind. Inevitably, a teacher who denies divine agency in creation, who insists that there is no intelligent purpose in it, undoubtedly impresses the student with the thought that all may be chance.

I say that no youth should be left without a counterbalancing thought. Even the skeptical teacher should be fair enough to say that Charles Darwin himself, when he faced the great questions of eventual annihilation, if creation is dominated only by chance, wrote: "It is an intolerable thought that man and all other sentient things are doomed to complete annihilation, after such long-continued, slow progress.

And another good authority, Raymond F. West, lecturing on immortality, said: "Why this vast expenditure of time and pain and blood? Why should man come so far if he is destined to go no farther? A creature which has traveled such distances and fought such battles and won such victories deserves, one is compelled to say, to conquer death and rob the grave of its victory."

The facts are, and the student should so understand, that all the preparation of earth is but an anticipation of the crowning glory of creation. Fosdick says: "The perpetuation of personality is the highest thing in creation." This great thinker has come by reasoning to what Joseph Smith received by revelation, which is one of the most sublime utterances in modern scripture: "For behold, this is my work and my glory -- to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." (Moses 1:39.) God's plan, God's purpose, is the perfection of humanity. He does care; he does love his children. He is not merely a blind force, not an abstract power, but a living, personal God.

Charles A. Dinsmore, formerly of Yale University, made the following statement concerning God as a personal being:

"It is the eye of faith that sees the broad horizons, the color and the gleam. Religion, standing on the known experience of the race, makes one bold and glorious affirmation. She asserts that this power that makes for truth, for beauty, and for goodness is not less personal than we. [And that is the declaration of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, that Jesus is not less personal than we, and that his Father, the Eternal Father, is a personal God.] This leap of faith is justified because God cannot be less than the greatest of His works; the Cause must be adequate to the effect. When, therefore, we call God personal, we have interpreted Him by the loftiest symbol we have. He may be infinitely more. He cannot be less. When we call God a Spirit, we use the clearest lens we have to look at the Everlasting. As Herbert Spencer has well said, `The choice is not between a personal God and something lower, but between a personal God and something higher.'" (Christianity and Modern Thought, Yale University Press, 1924.)

We of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints take our stand on true education from what has been given to us in the scriptures. In the Doctrine and Covenants it was revealed that: "Whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection.

"And if a person gains more knowledge and intelligence in this life through his diligence and obedience than another, he will have so much the advantage in the world to come." (D&C 130:18-19.)

And also: "It is impossible for a man to be saved in ignorance." (D&C 131:6.)

Southey tells us that on his walk one stormy day, he met an old woman to whom, by way of greeting, he made the rather obvious remark that it was dreadful weather. She answered philosophically that, in her opinion, "Any weather is better than none!" Likewise, any education is undoubtedly better than none, but a free people, to remain free, must ever strive for the highest and best.

Courses required of all students in our public schools should include the important areas of study that directly or indirectly provide the student with opportunities for spiritual growth and religious inspiration. From such study it is reasonable to expect that our students will better understand how vital has been the role of religion at critical moments in history; how important spiritual insights in religious faith can be in the lives of men and women; how closely related are human greatness and such qualities as honesty, integrity humility, generosity, and compassion.

We may expect in our students more idealism and less cynicism, more wholesome courage and faith in the future, and less pessimism and foreboding fear. We may hope for increased tolerance of racial and religious differences, increased respect for those of opposite political views or for those of lower social and economic levels; increased awareness of the basic and inviolable dignity of the individual man or woman. We may contribute to the development of a more sensitive social conscience -- a greater sense of responsibility for the less fortunate in our society. We may even, perhaps, without knowing it, bring a boy or girl closer to God.

I am repeating what we all know and feel when I say that our country's greatest asset is its manhood and its womanhood. Upon that depends not only the survival of the individual freedom vouchsafed by the Constitution and Bill of Rights and all other ideals for which the founders of the Republic fought and died, but also the survival of the best that we cherish in present-day civilization throughout the world. The preservation of these must come through education.

The Church stands for education. The very purpose of its organization is to promulgate truth among men. Members of the Church are admonished to acquire learning by study, and also by faith and prayer; to seek after everything that is virtuous, lovely, of good report, or praiseworthy. In this seeking after, they are not confined to narrow limits of dogma or creed, but are free to launch into the realm of the infinite.

But gaining knowledge is one thing, and applying it, quite another. Wisdom is the right application of knowledge, and true education -- the education for which the Church stands -- is the application of knowledge to the development of a noble and Godlike character.

A great and continuing purpose of education has been the development of moral and spiritual values. To fulfill this purpose, society calls upon its institutions. Special claims are made on the home and the school because of the central role of these two institutions in the nurture of the young.

By moral and spiritual values, we mean those values which, when applied in human behavior, exalt and refine life and bring it into accord with the standards of conduct that are approved in our democratic culture.

Youth need religion. The world needs it. It is the world's greatest need

God help us to teach the true religion as revealed in this dispensation by the Lord Jesus Christ to Joseph Smith. God bless you teachers in the Church schools, institutes, and seminaries, that you may have the spirit of this great latter-day work and lead the children to the realm of immortality and peace here as well as happiness throughout eternity.


God bless you brethren. With all my heart I pray God to bless you, that every member of the Church, as well as everyone who holds the priesthood, may sense the responsibility of membership in the Church of Christ. If we can only maintain the standards of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the future of the Church is secure. Truly, men and women will see a light that is not hidden under a bushel, but one that is set upon a hill, and they will be attracted by it, and will be led to seek the truth more by our acts and deeds and by what we radiate in virtue and integrity, rather than by what we say.

I pray God to bless us in this great work in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Hugh B. Brown, CR, April 1968, p.102-106
Recently the First Presidency issued a statement on the subject of education. In it they said, among other things, "The Church has long encouraged its members, and especially its youth, either to obtain a college education or to become well-trained in some vocation."

In our fast-growing industrial society, education has become a necessity, for unless our young people are well trained, they will not be able to obtain dignified and profitable employment in the future.

"The positions that do not require education or training are decreasing from year to year and soon will be nonexistent. We therefore strongly urge all young people to engage and continue in formal study of some kind beyond high school. Of equal importance is the selection of an educational program that takes into account each individual's interests, talents, and goals."

In choosing the best academic program for the future, you will need help and guidance. First, go to you parents for advice. They have known you longer than anyone else and have a mature insight into what it takes to succeed in life. They are deeply interested in your future; they love you with a self-sacrificing devotion that makes your well-being paramount to their own. Also, most of you are dependent upon them for financial help.

Next, you should turn for help to your Church leaders. Many of them have had experience in various fields. They will be glad to counsel with you and will join with you in seeking divine guidance.

We strongly urge all who have the aptitude, ambition, and gumption to continue their education on the college level and beyond. No young person should aim lower than his capacities justify. The world of tomorrow will make way for the specialist who is trained to work mathematical formulas, plead a case in court, discover a cure for a dread disease, develop new and better agricultural techniques, and so forth.

And that to me was the center of the President's remarks tonight: to add religious training to all your other seeking for knowledge, and then on your knees to ask God for guidance.

The Latter-day Saint Student Association has been established to bring into correlated relationship all phases of Church activity. We desire to encourage and assist students in achieving a more significant academic, religious, and social education. We seek to identify and meet the needs of our students on specific campuses. Under the direction of the priesthood, we try to develop Church programs that will help our college students to cope with challenges they meet on college campuses as well as in life generally.

The central concern at Brigham Young University, next to confirming your faith in God, is gaining and imparting knowledge. BYU is receiving wide recognition for achievement in many fields of study and research. This academic excellence is made possible by a professional, dedicated faculty, where serious-minded students will realize that the world today is looking for the educated mind and the skilled hand.

Religious activity is an integral part of all Latter-day Saint education and is available to all students. Many wards and stakes are organized on various campuses, with students assuming nearly all of the leadership positions.

Obviously not all Latter-day Saint students who desire a college education can enroll in one of the Church-related schools. Therefore, a program of religious education in the institutes of religion has been set up near many college campuses throughout the country.

"We strongly urge students to enroll in classes at the institutes so they can augment their secular learning with a religious education and spiritual experience." (Statement of the First Presidency.)

President McKay has said, "Character is the aim of true education. . . . True education seeks to make men and women not only good mathematicians, proficient linguists, profound scientists, or brilliant literary lights, but also honest men, with virtue, temperance, and brotherly love. It seeks to make men and women who prize truth, justice, wisdom, benevolence, and self-control as the choicest acquisitions of a successful life." (Era, Vol. 70 [September 1967], p. 3.)

We urge all members, young and old, to keep in mind always that the true purpose of life, both here and hereafter, is to seek the joy of eternal progression. As the glory of God is intelligence, man can only share that glory through continuing education of the whole man. As the Lord himself told Joseph Smith: "Whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection.

"And if a person gains more knowledge and intelligence in this life through his diligence and obedience than another, he will have so much the advantage in the world to come." (D&C 130:18-19.)

We charge you then, brethren and sisters, to be prepared -- physically mentally, spiritually, morally, aesthetically, and in every other way prepare for what the glorious future holds. The Church is making every possible provision for all of its members to excel.

The war which began in heaven and has been going on ever since -- a war in which the immortal souls of the children of men are at stake -- is about to reach a climactic point. This appeal, therefore, is in a very real sense a call to arms.

The call to be prepared is sent to each one of you by and from the President of the Church, the Prophet of God. It is vital and of paramount importance. The preparation must begin at the center of your hearts and extend to the end of your fingers and toes. Each one of you may become the master of his fate, the captain of his soul.

As David Sarnoff, the best-informed man in his field today, said to a class of students: "You face the new powers conferred by science to wreck or rebuild the world, and the degree to which you carry faith in God, in your fellowman and in yourselves, together with a sense of responsibility and continuing self-discipline, by this you will be able to determine whether these tremendous forces, now coming into your hands, will be used to build a better world or be responsible for its destruction. . . . The world needs the upsurge of spiritual vitality to resist the current cynicism and materialism. The gradual elimination of physical hungers will deepen the more elemental hunger for faith and salvation, for age-old values beyond the material and the temporal, they will gnaw at the spirit and the heart of man."

We need stout hearts to meet the future, a future pregnant with unborn events and big with possibilities. We need faith to try, hope to inspire, and courage to endure. ". . . let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly; then shall thy confidence wax strong in the presence of God; and the doctrine of the priesthood shall distil upon thy soul as the dews from heaven.

"The Holy Ghost shall be thy constant companion, and thy scepter an unchanging scepter of righteousness and truth; and thy dominion shall be an everlasting dominion, and without compulsory means it shall flow unto thee forever and ever." (D&C 121: 45-46.)

David O. McKay, CR, April 1968, p.145
Members of the Church are admonished to acquire truth by study, by faith and prayer, and to seek after everything that is "virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy." (Article of Faith 13.)

Schools and churches should radiate the fact that there are in life certain fundamentals that never change, which are essential to the happiness of every human soul. Parents and officers in the Church must teach more earnestly and diligently the principles of life and salvation to the youth of Zion and to the world in order to help youth keep in proper balance through the formative period of their lives.

N. Eldon Tanner, CR, October 1968, p.47-50
The only clear and sure solution to our problems is to make our professed Christianity real, to make it personal, apply it in our lives, accept Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and as the real living Savior of mankind, "for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." (Acts 4:12.)

Jesus Christ not only gave his life for us, but he has also given us clearly the plan of life and of salvation, and he has assured us that to gain eternal life we must live by sound doctrine, which is the word of the Lord, spoken either by God or Jesus Christ or by the prophets of God. This doctrine answers clearly and definitely such vital questions as:

Who are we?
Where did we come from?
Why are we here?
Is there life after death?
Is there a living, personal God?
What is our relationship to God, the Eternal Father?
Is Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, the Son of God?
What must we do to gain exaltation and enjoy eternal life?

For answers to these questions, let us turn to and consider the words of the Lord and of the prophets, both ancient and modern.

While we were all in the spirit world with God the Father, his Only Begotten Son, then with him in the spirit, said:

Communists, anti-Christs, and the promoters of the God-is-dead theory, as well as the skeptics and some who style themselves as religious leaders, are actively engaged in teaching false doctrine and in using every hostile means to break down and destroy a belief in God and in the scriptures, thereby fulfilling the prophecy of Jesus Christ when he said:

"For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect." (Matt. 24:24.)

Also, many, as they become learned in the worldly things such as science and philosophy, become self-sufficient and are prepared to lean unto their own understanding, even to the point where they think they are independent of God; and because of their worldly learning they feel that if they cannot prove physically, mathematically, or scientifically that God lives, they can and should feel free to question and even to deny God and Jesus Christ. Then many of our professors begin to teach perverse things, to lead away disciples after them; and our youth whom we send to them for learning accept them as authority, and many are caused to lose their faith in God.

A graduate student who had just received his doctor of philosophy degree was telling me of some of the attacks that are made on Christianity, or a belief in God, and how difficult it is to stand up against them, particularly for those who have not been taught the gospel in their homes and who have not gained a testimony of its truthfulness. He said that one professor taunted him with this statement: "Surely you don't believe in that archaic stuff you find in the Bible and in your Book of Mormon," and then spent some time with him trying to turn him away from the truth.

I cannot understand a scientist or pseudo-intellectual, or anyone who should be searching for the truth, having the temerity to place himself as authority in religion to the point that he would challenge, let alone deny, the teachings of God the Eternal Father, the Creator of the world, and of his Son Jesus Christ because he cannot prove it scientifically.

How much wiser and better it is for man to accept the simple truths of the gospel and to accept as authority God, the Creator of the world, and his Son Jesus Christ, and to accept by faith those things which he cannot disprove and for which he cannot give a better explanation. He must be prepared to acknowledge that there are certain things -- many, many things -- that he cannot understand.

How can we deny or even disbelieve God when we cannot understand even the simplest things around us -- how the leaf functions, what electricity is, what our emotions are, when the spirit enters the body, and what happens to it when it leaves? How can we say that because we do not understand the resurrection, there is not or cannot be a resurrection?

We are admonished to "trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding." (Prov. 3:5.) And we are warned: "Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!" (Isa. 5:21.)

How can man believe and know that he can travel in manmade space ships around the earth at thousands and thousands of miles an hour, communicate with man here upon the earth, and be directed in his course, with the knowledge that if he keeps in tune with home base he will be guided back to a safe landing; and that mere man can also construct implements such as the Surveyor, which he has sent to the moon, with which he has communicated in directing its activities, and from which he has received reports -- and still say that it is impossible for and, the Creator of the world, to communicate with man, his own creation, who is traveling through space on a space ship created b God and known as the earth, and that by keeping in touch with home base he can be assured of a safe return when he has completed his tour here upon the earth?

In order to return to our Father in heaven, it is most important that we and our children know and understand and apply the teachings of Jesus Christ in our lives. In order to understand, we must be taught. The question is: Where and how are we to be taught? The gospel or the spiritual side of life is not permitted to be taught in the schools. In fact, in so many of our schools, and particularly in the universities, as pointed out before, a belief in God and the teachings of Jesus Christ are derided.

It is the general attitude of people that the teaching of the gospel should be left to the churches, but only a small percentage of either the parents or the children attend church, where they could be taught. And to even that small minority who do attend, many of the churches are failing to teach sound, unadulterated doctrine as given to us by the Savior and the prophets through whom the Lord speaks.

Harold B. Lee, CR, October 1968, p.59
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, is "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.
Ezra Taft Benson, CR, April 1969, p.11-15
Let us consider some of the precepts of men that may and do cause some of the humble followers of Christ to err.

Christ taught that we should be in the world but not of it. Yet there are some in our midst who are not so much concerned about taking the gospel into the world as the are about bringing worldliness into the gospel. They want us to be in the world and of it. They want us to be popular with the worldly even though a prophet has said that this is impossible, for all hell would then want to join us.

Through their own reasoning and a few misapplied scriptures, they try to sell us the precepts and philosophies of men. They do not feel the Church is progressive enough -- they say that it should embrace the social and socialist gospel of apostate Christendom.

Unauthorized to receive revelation for the Church, but I fear still anxious to redirect the Church in the way they think it should go, some of them have taken to publishing their differences with the Church, in order to give their heretical views a broader and, they hope, a more respectable platform.

Along this line it would be well for all of us to remember these words of President George Q. Cannon:

"A friend . . . wished to know whether we . . . considered an honest difference of opinion between a member of the Church and the Authorities of the Church was apostasy. . . . We replied that we had not stated that an honest difference of opinion between a member of the Church and the Authorities constituted apostasy, for we could conceive of a man honestly differing in opinion from the Authorities of the Church and yet not be an apostate; but we could not conceive of a man publishing those differences of opinion and seeking by arguments, sophistry and special pleading to enforce them upon the people to produce division and strife and to place the acts and counsels of the Authorities of the Church, if possible, in a wrong light and not be an apostate, for such conduct was apostasy as we understood the term." (Deseret News, November 3, 1869.)

The world teaches birth control. Tragically, many of our sisters subscribe to its pills and practices when they could easily provide earthly tabernacles for more of our Father's children. We know that every spirit assigned to this earth will come, whether through us or someone else There are couples in the Church who think they are getting along just fine with their limited families but who will someday suffer the pains of remorse when they meet the spirits that might have been part of their posterity. The first commandment given to man was to multiply and replenish the earth with children. That commandment has never been altered, modified, or canceled. The Lord did not say to multiply and replenish the earth if it is convenient, or if you are wealthy, or after you have gotten your schooling, or when there is peace on earth, or until you have four children. The Bible says, "Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: ". . . Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them. . ." (Ps. 127:3, 5.) We believe God is glorified by having numerous children and a program of perfection for them. So also will God glorify that husband and wife who have a large posterity and who have tried to raise them up in righteousness.

The precepts of men would have you believe that by limiting the population of the world, we can have peace and plenty. That is the doctrine of the devil. Small numbers do not insure peace; only righteousness does. After all, there were only a handful of men on the earth when Cain interrupted the peace of Adam's household by slaying Abel. On the other hand, the whole city of Enoch was peaceful; and it was taken into heaven because it was made up of righteous people.

A major reason why there is famine in some parts of the world is because evil men have used the vehicle of government to abridge the freedom that men need to produce abundantly.

True to form, many of the people who desire to frustrate God's purposes of giving mortal tabernacles to his spirit children through worldwide birth control are the very same people who support the kinds of government that perpetuate famine. They advocate an evil to cure the results of the wickedness they support.

The world worships the learning of man. They trust in the arm of flesh. To them, men's reasoning is greater than God's revelations. 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 an indoctrination and come out untainted. Unfortunately, of those who succumb, some use their higher degree to get teaching positions even in our Church educational system, where they spread the falsehoods they have been taught. President Joseph F. Smith was right when he said that false educational ideas would be one of the three threats to the Church within. (Gospel Doctrine, pp. 312-13.)

Another threat, and he said it is the most serious of the three, would be sexual impurity. Today we have both of these threats combined in the growing and increasingly amoral program of sex education in the schools. At the last general Relief Society conference of the Church, Elder Harold B. Lee quoted President J. Reuben Clark, Jr., in regard to this matter. Let us listen and learn from the following wise words of this seer, President Clark:

"Many influences (more than ever before in my lifetime) are seeking to break down chastity with its divinely declared sanctity. . . .
"In schoolrooms the children are taught what is popularly called `the facts of life.' Instead of bringing about the alleged purpose of the teaching, that is, strengthening of the morals of youth, this teaching seems to have had directly the opposite effect. The teaching seems merely to have whetted curiosity and augmented appetite. (Relief Society Magazine, December 1952, p. 793.)

". . . A mind engrossed in sex is not good for much else. . . .

"Already the schools have taught sex facts ad nauseam. All their teachings have but torn away the modesty that once clothed sex; their discussions tend to make, and sometimes seem to make, sex animals of our boys and girls. The teachings do little but arouse curiosity for experience. . . .

"A work on chastity can be given in one sentence, two words: Be chaste! That tells everything. You do not need to know all the details of the reproductive process in order to keep clean. . . ." (Era, December 1949, p. 803. See also, CR, October 1949, p. 194.)

Our Church News editorials have warned us about sex education in the schools. As the April 1, 1967, editorial stated:

"Sex education belongs in the home. . . . Movements to place sex education in nearly all grades of public schools can end only in the same result which came to Sweden."

In answer to inquiries that have been received by the First Presidency about sex education in the schools, they have made the following statement: "We believe that serious hazards are involved in entrusting to the schools the teaching of this vital and important subject to our children. This responsibility cannot wisely be left to society, nor the schools: nor can the responsibility be shifted to the Church. It is the responsibility of parents to see that they fully perform their duty in this respect.

When you make a close study of the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (known as SIECUS), which is the major organization pushing sex education in the schools, and read their literature and learn of their amoral leadership, you can better appreciate why the Church is opposed to sex education in the schools, whether it is called family living program or by any other name. I commend the parents who have worked to keep it out of their schools and those who have pushed it out or are attempting to do so. They must love their children.

And so the precepts of men are at work on our youth in so many ways. Said President Clark, ". . . a tremendous amount of the modern art, of the modern literature and music, and the drama that we have today is utterly demoralizing -- utterly." (Relief Society Magazine, December 1952, p. 792.)

Have you been listening to the music that many young folks are hearing today? Some of it is nerve-jamming in nature and much of it has been deliberately designed to promote revolution, dope, immorality, and a gap between parent and child. And some of this music has invaded our church cultural halls.

Now what kind of magazines come into your home? With perhaps one or two exceptions, I would not have any of the major national slick magazines in my home. As President Clark so well put it, ". . . take up any national magazine, look at the ads and, if you can stand the filth, read some of the stories -- they are, in their expressed and suggestive standards of life, destructive of the very foundations of our society." (CR, April 1951, p. 79.)

Now hear this test proposed by President George Q. Cannon: "If the breach is daily widening between ourselves and the world . . . we may be assured that our progress is certain, however slow. On the opposite hand, if our feelings and affections, our appetites and desires, are in unison with the world around us and freely fraternize with them . . . we should do well to examine ourselves. Individuals in such a condition might possess a nominal position in the Church but would be lacking the life of the work, and, like the foolish virgins who slumbered while the bridegroom tarried, they would be unprepared for his coming. . . ." (Millennial Star, Oct. 5, 1861 [Vol. 23], pp. 645-46.)

May we cherish God's revelations more than man's reasoning and choose to follow the prophets of the Lord rather than the precepts of men is my humble prayer, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Alvin R. Dyer, CR, April 1969, p.54-55, 57
These deceptive and shadowed objectives of well-propagandized programs are moving at a very rapid clip. The first to which I refer is sex education or family life education, which is placing emphasis on raw sex in the school classroom, creating widespread contention, causing deep concern among parents and leaders.

The programmers of this type of sex education, aware of resistance, are fortified with worked-out methods to deal with parental and community opposition. This matter needs the serious concern of an aroused public to deny the use of such materials and more firmly establish sound moral teachings in the fields of physiology and hygiene, as now provided by public school law.

The National Education Association and American Medical Association's endorsement of a maturation educational program seems to have stepped up the activity of such organizations as the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (known as SIECUS) and the School Health Education Studies (known as SHES), with others, particularly those that are integrated in family life education courses.

With ominous precision, reputable publishing houses are competing in this untapped market with expertly prepared materials, films, and teaching aids of all sorts. Herein, because of its sensational marketable value, is a formidable danger.
False images in the life of the very young will result from their idea to teach facts of reproduction before youth are emotionally involved. The misguided fostering of sex education in the classroom on the basis that it will lessen sex ignorance and reduce illegitimate pregnancy, venereal disease, and related problems has no basis for sound conclusions. Actual experience has proven the results to be just the opposite.

The "new morality" requires that young people solve their own sex problems without the help of teachers or parents. What is moral and what is not moral, or whether morality is involved at all, is to be decided by the student. The most surprising and devastating of all is the effort that is being made to isolate sex education as being completely devoid of moral responsibility, fear, inhibitions, and emotional restraints.

Whether used by those who are skilled or unskilled, any teachings that describe and illustrate human reproductive organs and their functions, and any teachings that are directly counter to standards of sexual morality, do not harmonize with the gospel, and the Church is therefore opposed to such. They are void of respect and reverence for the opposite sex, life, birth, and parenthood.

We must not be insensible to evil influences that are being thrust upon us by the perverted principles of sex education, sensitivity training, youth for alcohol, and any flexibilities in the sacredness of marriage, which are challenging moral decency and righteousness. We must unite our efforts, by organized parental councils with fathers taking part, through school boards, textbook committees, and proper legislation, to vigorously oppose such programming.

Mark E. Petersen, CR, April 1969, p.63-64
I would like to say, with all the emphasis at my command, that the proper teaching of sex requires also the teaching of complete chastity, whether that instruction is given in the home, the school, or the church. To do otherwise is nothing less than suicidal. To ignore chastity in such instruction can transform it into a course in youthful sex experimentation.

God made sex, but not for entertainment. It was provided for a divinely appointed act of creation in which we, to this extent, become co-creators with him.

If we fail to teach this, we defeat the whole purpose of sex education.When schools are prevented from teaching anything of a spiritual nature, they are thereby disqualified from teaching sex at all, for in its very nature, sex is spiritual and inseparably connected with the creative work of God.

We are not animals, to dwell only in a physical world. We are the offspring of God, learning in this life to become like him.

He decreed that human beings never shall indulge in sex outside of holy matrimony, which he himself instituted. This is his definition of chastity. This is what he requires of every man and every woman.

Sex education belongs in the home, where parents can teach chastity in a spiritual environment as they reveal the facts of life to their children. There, in all plainness, the youngsters can be taught that procreation is part of the creative work of God and that, therefore, the act of replenishing the earth must be kept on the high plane of personal purity that God provides, free from all forms of perversion.

Richard L. Evans, CR, April 1969, p.73-74
The innocence with which children come into the world is one of the awesome responsibilities of all who, in any way, influence their lives. And to see such unstained innocence neglected or abused, or exposed to evil or unwholesome influence, or warped by bad example, or by false teaching -- or by failure to teach -- is a sobering concern.

There are many who have responsibility for teaching children: parents, teachers, friends, anyone who in any way enters their lives, including the makers and promoters of products, of policies; creators of entertainment, and the whole community, publicly and privately. And children in their innocence have a right to be protected from exploitation and from evil influence.

As to teachers, the following is cited from a significant source: "The personal influence of the teacher, in molding the character of the pupils, is the most important element in their education.... In morals, a teacher cannot teach what he is not. If he talks what he is not, it were better not said, for his life talks more forcibly and is sooner believed, both by children and adults." (W. M. Welch, How to Organize, Classify and Teach a Country School.)

Always we must remember that the teacher teaches himself. As Henry Adams said it: "A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops." (The Education of Henry Adams, ch. 20.)

People who speak of their private lives as a thing apart from their professions would well remember this sentence from Stanford University's Dr. David Starr Jordan: "There is no real excellence in all this world," he said, "which can be separated from right living." (The University and the Common Man.)

Spencer W. Kimball, CR, October 1969, p.22-23
Every family is urged to engage in regular night and morning family prayers and to devote at least one evening a week at home in the sweet family togetherness undisturbed by the world or any of its allurements. They will plan to turn off the TV and radio, leave the telephone unanswered, cancel all calls or appointments, and spend a warm, homey evening together.

While one objective is reached by merely being together, yet the additional and greater value can come from the lessons of life. The father will teach the children. Here they can learn integrity, honor, dependableness, sacrifice, and faith in God. Life's experiences and the scriptures are the basis of the teaching and this, wrapped up in filial and parental love, makes an impact nothing else can make. Thus, reservoirs of righteousness are filled to carry children through the dark days of temptation and desire, of drought and skepticism. As they grow up, the children cooperate in building this storage for themselves and the family. And so we have the home evening and the family prayers and the simple things that have been taught to us all our days.

One day, long ago, we crossed a boundary into a distant city where walls and curtains separated people; and behind the walls, strange ideologies were taught and "pernicious doctrines" promulgated every day in the schools and otherwise.

Every day the children listened to schoolteachers with foreign and strange doctrines, philosophies, and ideals.
Someone said that "constant dripping will wear away the hardest stone." This I knew, so I asked about the children:

O they retain their faith? Are they not overcome by the constant pressure of their teachers? How can you be sure they will not leave you and the simple faith in God?"

The answer was unmistakable. "We mend the damaged reservoir every night," they said. "We teach our children positive righteousness so that the false philosophies do not take hold, and should any have taken lodgment in the day, we dislodge them at night. Our children are growing up in faith and righteousness in spite of the overwhelming pressures from outside."

Generally, cracked dams can be mended and saved, and sand bags can hold back the flood; and reiterated truth, renewed prayer, gospel teachings, a flood of love, and parental interest can save the child and keep him on the right path.

I like to compare the home evening, family prayer, and other associated activities of the Church for the saving of the family, when they are conscientiously carried out, with an umbrella. If the umbrella is not opened up, it is little more than a cane and can give little protection from the storms of nature. Likewise, God-given plans are of little value unless they are used.

The umbrella spread out makes the silken material taut. When the rain falls, it runs off; when the snow falls, it slides off; when the hail comes, it bounces off; when the wind blows, it is diverted around the umbrella. And in like manner, this spiritual umbrella wards off the foes of ignorance, superstition, skepticism, apostasy, immorality, and other forms of godlessness.

Ezra Taft Benson, CR, October 1969, p.61, 63-64
Some of the most prominent targets now under withering fire in this war against us are the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, the Constitution of the United States, the institution of private property, and the basic concepts of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Surely this is a time when consideration might well be given by the people of America, and the entire free world, to the important matter of citizenship responsibility and, more importantly, membership in the churches of the free world....

The justices may or may not welcome this new opportunity to reenforce their strange new doctrine of neutrality in the weird war that is being fronted against God and religion. Undoubtedly, the Court's ultimate decision will be influenced by what happens to the attitude of the American people in the meantime. For the real question now is this: How much longer will the American people -- the whole Christian world -- continue to tolerate the sadistic beating that religion has been taking in this country and elsewhere for the past 25 years?

Frankly recognizing that godless forces in this country have always been overwhelmingly outnumbered by the faithful, the first working principle of the anti-God strategists has been to move insidiously and always carefully to avoid anything that resembles a direct attack or a frontal confrontation with their opponents.

So in launching their campaign against God, the attackers proceeded first to ignore him in the secular press; second, to humanize him in the churches; third, to clobber him with ridicule on the campus; and, finally, to induce the courts to enforce official governmental neutrality in all litigated controversies about God and religion.

From a practical standpoint, of course, these decisions establish a union of state and atheism. The accomplishment of this last objective has taken prayer out of the public schools; and if and when the judicial conclusion is extended to its logical limits, it will abolish tax exemption for church property, eliminate chaplains from the armed services, remove our motto "In God we trust from our coins, and require major surgery upon our official salute to the flag.

We must realize that the anti-prayer decisions are simply a beguiling climax in the wide-ranging campaign against God and religion that has been sustained here in this country, and in many other nations, for more than three decades.

Judging by its demoralized works, atheism has now quit advancing in this country simply because it has arrived. Not just rhetorically but actually -- our country is in an ungodly mess. City streets are terrorized by crime; our biggest and most expensive campuses are paralyzed by nihilism and anarchy; with special license from the Supreme Court, theaters are boldly featuring sex perversion and the newsstands are loaded with hard-core pornography. Big-name investigating commissions have told us all about riots, crime, progress, and poverty, but always in materialistic terms of money, housing, social service jobs, and birth control -- without a word about the possibilities for personal moral self-restraint.

What about our churches? You have heard the startling story of what scientific atheism has done to institutional religion in the United States and elsewhere.

But if atheism has taken over, then who and where are the atheists? It was sheer coincidence, of course, that the day after the 1968 astronauts gave us their inspiring prayer from the moon, the Gallup Poll reported that 98 percent of the American people believe in God. Fantastic? Not at all. Mow many avowed atheists do you know personally?

Organized atheism, representing just two percent of our population, has contaminated -- is still contaminating -- the whole course of American life, of Christian life everywhere. In this country today a two percent tail is wagging the big 98 percent dog. Never in all history have so many been hornswoggled by so few.

For years we have all been obsessed with the iniquities of the Supreme Court. The way to do something about the Supreme Court is for the 98 percent of us to become obsessed with the omnipotent goodness of the Supreme Being. What do you suppose would happen in all branches of our government if the 98 percent of us would stop complaining and start working and praying?

Ezra Taft Benson, Improvement Era, December 1970, p.46, 49
Never has the devil been so well organized, and never in our day has he had so many powerful emissaries working for him. We must do everything in our power to strengthen and safeguard the home and family.

The adversary knows "that the home is the first and most effective place for children to learn the lessons of life: truth, honor, virtue, self-control; the value of education, honest work, and the purpose and privilege of life. Nothing can take the place of home in rearing and teaching children, and no other success can compensate for failure in the home." (President David O. McKay, in Family Home Evening Manual, 1968-69, p. iii.)

Parents are directly responsible for the righteous rearing of their children, and this responsibility cannot be safely delegated to relatives, friends, neighbors, the school, the church, or the state.

As a watchman on the tower, I feel to warn you that one of the chief means of misleading our youth and destroying the family unit is our educational institutions. President Joseph F. Smith referred to false educational ideas as one of the three threatening dangers among our Church members. There is more than one reason why the Church is advising our youth to attend colleges close to their homes where institutes of religion are available. It gives the parents the opportunity to stay close to their children; and if they have become alert and informed as President McKay admonished us last year, these parents can help expose some of the deceptions of men like Sigmund Freud, Charles Darwin, John Dewey, Karl Marx, John Keynes, and others.

Today there are much worse things that can happen to a child than not getting a full college education. In fact, some of the worst things have happened to our children while attending colleges led by administrators who wink at subversion and amorality.

Said Karl G. Maeser, "I would rather have my child exposed to smallpox, typhus fever, cholera, or other malignant and deadly diseases than to the degrading influence of a corrupt teacher. It is infinitely better to take chances with an ignorant, but pure-minded teacher than with the greatest philosopher who is impure."...

Vocational education, correspondence courses, establishment in a family business are being considered for their children by an increasing number of parents.

The tenth plank in Karl Marx's Manifesto for destroying our kind of civilization advocated the establishment of "free education for all children in public schools." There were several reasons why Marx wanted government to run the schools. Dr. A. A. Hodge pointed out one of them when he said, "It is capable of exact demonstration that if every party in the State has the right of excluding from public schools whatever he does not believe to be true, then he that believes most must give way to him that believes least, and then he that believes least must give way to him that believes absolutely nothing, no matter in how small a minority the atheists or agnostics may be. It is self-evident that on this scheme, 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.

After the tragic prayer decision was made by the 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?

Today, Brigham Young University is the largest private school in the United States. Parents from far and near are looking to Brigham Young University as never before.
Now, whether your child attends this type of school or not, it is important that you stay close to your children, daily review, if possible, what they have learned in school, and go over their textbooks.

President Joseph Fielding Smith has stated that in public schools you cannot get a textbook, anywhere that he knows of, on the "ologies" that doesn't contain nonsense. (Take Heed to Yourselves, p. 32.)

I know one noble father who reviews with his children regularly what they have been taught; and if they have been taught any falsehoods, then the children and the father together research out the truth. If your children are required to put down on exams the falsehoods that have been taught, then perhaps they can follow President Joseph Fielding Smith's counsel of prefacing their answer with the words "teacher says," or they might say "you taught" or "the textbook states."

If your children are taught untruths on evolution in the public schools or even in our Church schools, provide them with a copy of President Joseph Fielding Smith's excellent rebuttal in his book Man, His Origin and Destiny.

Recently some parents paid for space in a newspaper to run an open letter to the school principal of their son. The letter in part stated: "You are hereby notified that our son, _________ is not allowed by his undersigned parents to participate in, or be subject to instruction in, any training or education in sex, human biological development, attitude development, self-understanding, personal and family life, or group therapy, or sensitivity training, or self-criticism, or any combination or degree thereof, without the consent of the undersigned by express written permission...

"We intend to retain and exercise our parental rights to guide our child in the areas of morality and sexual behavior without any interference or contradiction imposed by school personnel.

"[Our son] has been taught to recognize the format of sensitivity training, group therapy, self-criticism, etc., as it is being broadly applied, lowering the standards of morality and replacing American individual responsibility with the dependency on, and conformity to, the `herd consensus' concept of collectivism.

"He has been instructed to promptly remove himself from any class in which he is exposed to the aforementioned indoctrination and to report to us any such disregard of this letter."

The Lord knew that in the last days Satan would try to destroy the family unit. He knew that by court edict, pornography would be allowed to prosper.

Now what of the entertainment that is available to our young people today? Are you being undermined right in your home through your TV, radio, slick magazines, rock records? Much of the rock music is purposely designed to push immorality, narcotics, revolution, atheism, and nihilism, through language that often has a double meaning and with which many parents are not familiar.

Parents who are informed can warn their children of the demoralizing, loud, raucous beat of rock music, which deadens the senses and dulls the sensibilities -- the jungle rhythm which inflames the savagery within.