This past week the university (at long last!) opened an exhibit in the Joseph F. Smith Building called “Educating the Soul: Our Zion Tradition of Learning and Faith.” It is housed in a stunning exhibit space that has not been accessible to the campus or public until now. The gallery is bathed in light, with spectacular views of the campus and mountains. Let me share personal reflections about learning in the light prompted by visiting this light-filled exhibit that tells the story of how the Latter-day Saints have sought to see the light of truth both by the natural light of reason and by the spiritual light of revelation. I’ll give you a sort of virtual tour. You can take your own actual tours starting immediately after this meeting and thereafter on any weekday.
The Savior as the Source of Light
When I visit the exhibit, I am reminded by its very structure that the Savior is the source of light and truth as well as the master Teacher whose example must ever guide us here. Even the courtyard fountain consisting of water gushing from massive rocks reminds me of Christ, as does the oculus set in the exact center of the exhibit hall ceiling. Both the sunlight streaming through the oculus and all spatial relationships in the exhibit radiate from this point of light. One enters the exhibit via a circular stairway, literally climbing toward the light radiating from the oculus. As I climb up the stairs, I think of a passage from a poem by the seventeenth-century poet John Donne about his struggle to find the true church:
On a huge hill,
Cragged, and steep, Truth stands, and he that will
Reach her, about must and about must go.1
The ascent reminds me that learning by the light of study and faith requires strenuous effort—mental and spiritual. The Lord taught Latter-day Saints this from the first. Yet too often many assume that the Lord will reveal truth merely for the asking—as if Latter-day Saints were somehow excused from the rigorous effort required of others just because we have the gospel. Not so! There must be strenuous effort. LDS scientists, poets, composers, artists, and scholars must pay the same price as anyone else. Likewise, we are deeply indebted to those from all faiths and walks of life who have toiled away in behalf of truth and beauty. The Light of Christ is available to all people, and Latter-day Saints are expected to learn from all those who have brought light into the world. As I ascend the stairs to the gallery, this thought humbles me, inspiring gratitude and determination to work hard.
Later in the exhibit I observe replicas of textbooks used in the School of the Prophets, reminding me that even a mighty seer and translator submitted himself to the difficult discipline of language study to acquire Hebrew, German, and Greek. I am also moved by the accompanying bowl, towel, and clean linen—reminders that those who entered the School of the Prophets were to be clean. Worthiness and work: in the Lord’s curriculum, these twin virtues have ever been prerequisites for learning in the light. Those who would receive light by study and faith must work and must be worthy.
As I enter the hall, I am drawn to the spectacular view of Y Mountain through a two-story glass wall and to a quiet grouping of furniture in the center of the exhibit. The furniture surrounds a small, graceful statue of Christ as shepherd, set on a table standing on a carpet designed with a vine motif. I recall President Hinckley’s admonition to us, as Brigham Young University faculty, to be shepherds to our students and the Savior’s injunction to graft our lives into the true vine (see John 15:1–6). All these elements of the main gallery—the oculus, the stairway, the carpet, the figure of Christ—attest to the centrality of the Savior in the Latter-day Saint quest to learn in the light.
Light from Temples and Towering Founders
Dominating the exhibits in the side halls are two huge murals facing each other: one depicting the Kirtland Temple and the other illustrating the Brigham Young Academy (BYA) and Maeser Building. These murals introduce the respective themes in the south and north wings. The south wing recounts the story of establishing schools in Zion—starting from the Midwest through the migration of the Saints to these mountains—while the north wing mural tells of the rise of Brigham Young Academy and the early history of BYU. Seeing the murals together, facing each other, causes me to contemplate the relationship between LDS temples and schools. The Kirtland Temple was used as a school and is specifically referred to in scripture as “a house of learning” (D&C 88:119, 109:8). Likewise, the Academy buildings and the Maeser Building, along with other campus edifices, were regularly referred to in our early days as “temples of learning.”2 There are, and ought to be, deep continuities between these houses of learning—LDS temples and Church universities. Note that the Church has always located its colleges and universities near a temple. May the day never come when it appears oxymoronic to think of BYU as a temple of learning that bears a familial resemblance to LDS temples.
Reflecting on the relationship between temples and the university, I recall a lesson learned through a sacred experience many years ago when I was working on the academic freedom committee. We put this question to the BYU Board of Trustees: Should a temple worthiness standard apply to BYU faculty as it does for all other Church employees? The answer came back emphatically “yes” in spite of the complications this might create around academic freedom-related employment issues. As I pondered the answer, I had the strong impression that the Lord wanted a consecrated faculty at BYU. He was, after all, entrusting large numbers of the youth of Zion to us. Yes, he wanted faculty who would keep the Honor Code. But if they were LDS, he wanted faculty who had made temple covenants—the very covenants that our students are learning to make and keep. This would be critical for BYU to shine with a special light and to play a role in the ongoing rolling forth of the kingdom.
As I continue to orient myself to the exhibit space, I note that the exhibits in the south wing are introduced by a display about Joseph Smith as God’s student while the north wing features a display on Karl G. Maeser. By implication, the stories told in each wing seem to be part of the long shadow of these towering founding figures. Their influence on Church education continues to unfold. This reminds me that the history of education in Zion is not primarily about buildings but about people, such as Brother Joseph and Brother Maeser. Within the exhibit I discover stories, many stories, of people who have given their lives to educating Zion. I am told that these stories are not intended to idolize the founders nor to inflate their accomplishments but to make each observer feel “I can do that” and “I should do that.” That is the effect on me.
Light from Our Pioneer Heritage
As I walk through the south wing, which tells of the Saints’ heroic efforts to establish schools in Kirtland, Nauvoo, and the Great Basin, I am overwhelmed with the epic story of struggle and sacrifice to educate the Saints according to the pattern and principles revealed to the Prophet Joseph. It inspires me to remember the legacy of learning in the light bequeathed us by the early pioneers. After leaving the comfortable red-brick world of Nauvoo—where seemingly every home, store, and community building doubled as a school—the Saints were faced with the challenge of educating the rising generation in barren sagebrush valleys. In such circumstances, one would expect the pioneers to concentrate on mere survival. Instead, from the very first, Latter-day Saint pioneers focused their energies on culture, civilization, and education as well as on the requirements of mere subsistence. Their aim was not merely to survive but to raise up a Zion people, which meant educating and refining a rising generation. They knew, as Elder Holland put it, that “this Church is always only one generation away from extinction. . . . All we would have to do . . . to destroy this work is stop teaching our children for one generation.”3 So they taught their children in the light.
They taught the gospel out of the scriptures, yes, but they also taught “out of the best books” (D&C 88:118). They taught “of things both in heaven and in the earth, and under the earth,” and of “wars and the perplexities of the nations” (D&C 88:79). They taught of “languages, tongues, and people” (D&C 90:15). At first they taught arithmetic and grammar in lean-to tents and around campfires, later in log homes and rudimentary schools, and eventually in impressive stake academies that rose high above treeless sagebrush valleys and red sand deserts. These academies would in time form the foundation of both the state and Church systems of higher education. Weber State, Utah State, Snow College, Dixie College, and even the University of Utah all began as Church schools.
As I take in the displays on education in pioneer Utah, I recall research that I did a few years ago for an article on Shakespeare among the early Latter-day Saints.4 No other western pioneers were so committed to promulgating not only Shakespeare but also all the arts and sciences. Wallace Stegner, who grew up in a small frontier town on the Canadian prairie, tells of finding his family’s two-volume edition of Shakespeare’s collected plays tossed unceremoniously into the town dump. He ruefully saw this as a symbol of how much had to be discarded, how much was left behind, to settle the West.5
By contrast, Latter-day Saints brought with them into the wilderness not only Shakespeare but also all the best books they could carry, not to mention musical and scientific instruments. All these would be needed to build up Zion. Upon arriving in the valley of the Great Salt Lake, the pioneers quickly formed the Deseret Musical and Dramatic Society, built the Social Hall, and later built the finest theater between St. Louis and San Francisco. Within a few years you could see more Shakespeare in Salt Lake City than anywhere between the Mississippi and the West Coast. Moreover, virtually every Mormon village in the hinterlands had a school stocked with McGuffey Readers—containing quotes from Shakespeare and other famous writers—and many towns sponsored community musical and dramatic associations. I discovered that within two years of settling Cedar City, Mormon pioneers staged The Merchant of Venice in a log fort using blankets for curtains—a remarkable pioneer prelude to the replica Globe Theater that now stands in the shadow of the red cliffs of the old Iron Mission. This is but one example of how seriously our forebears took the scriptural injunction to seek light and wisdom out of the best books. What would they think of our opportunities to learn in the light?
Learning in the Light of Testimony
Knowing the extensive research required for me to uncover the history of Shakespeare in pioneer Utah, I am impressed by the research that informs the displays I peruse. To my knowledge, never before has the story of education in the Church been told in such a comprehensive way. Remarkably, the research, graphic designs, and artwork in the exhibit were executed largely by students. Student researchers sometimes appear in the short videos in the displays, sharing their perspectives on the topic at hand. This format works especially well for me in a video about a well-known academic freedom controversy during the Brimhall administration.6 It is illuminating to see this controversy presented from a student point of view. The student commentators clearly sympathize with President Brimhall and with the students in the early 1900s caught up in the event—the beautiful white birds Brimhall dreamed of, lured to the ground and rendered incapable of flight. Our current students’ reflections on this episode make me realize what was most at stake in the controversy. It was not simply what was being taught but whether it was being taught with testimony or in a cynical attempt to undermine faith. Then and now, BYU students expect to be taught with testimony. They can tolerate significant diversity of viewpoint if they know and feel that their professors are deeply devoted to the Lord and his Church.
This imperative to teach with testimony hasn’t changed over the years. The same fundamentals apply. Students expect to be taught with testimony, no matter the subject, by faculty who are themselves happily grounded in the gospel, no matter their disciplines. Within these parameters, there is considerable room for viewpoint diversity. Walking through this display brings back memories of my days working on BYU’s academic freedom statement and of reading the recent biography of Henry Eyring, whose example of integrating science and faith inspired generations of Latter-day Saints. Henry Eyring, though not a BYU faculty member, is exemplary of many faculty here who have taken seriously the integration of one’s life as a scholar and saint.7
Maeser’s Enlightened Plan for Church Schools
Chief among these at BYU is Karl G. Maeser, whose influence shaped a whole generation of LDS academics: Widtsoe, Talmage, Edwin Hinckley, Alice Louise Reynolds, and a host of others who then went on to extend the Maeser influence across the Church and the generations. The exhibit properly emphasizes Maeser’s influence on others. His key contribution was imparting light to others.
I have long known that Maeser’s educational philosophy included welding character and academics. I have often heard anecdotes from his life. What I did not know until visiting the exhibit is that—after receiving the famous charge from Brigham Young to teach nothing, not even the alphabet or times tables, without the Spirit of God8—Maeser set down his educational philosophy for the Brigham Young Academy in writing, and his plan included a strong commitment to active student learning. The written plan is now lost, but the exhibitors located the desk where Maeser composed it and have sketched out what can be inferred about the contours of Maeser’s plan. They write the following:
In the late spring of 1876, shortly after his arrival in Provo, Maeser received word that in a few days Brigham Young would be visiting him. President Young wanted to learn how Maeser planned to implement the charge he had given him.
Maeser sat at his desk that night to work out his ideas. Nothing came. Through the next day and the day after, he paced his office and scribbled notes. The third day, in the late afternoon, he dropped, exhausted and disheartened, to his knees.
“O Father,” he pleaded, “show me the way; help me to make the plans for this great work. I cannot do it of myself.”
Immediately the confusion of the preceding days was lifted, and within a few hours Maeser had written out the plan for the new school. It had come to him as an answer to prayer.9
The model Maeser developed featured mentoring by faculty who were to be role models of academic rigor and moral rectitude. Maeser’s model also featured active learning by students who were expected to take responsibility for their own education and for helping other students learn. Again the exhibitors write:
As “the guiding rule for the teacher,” [Maeser] believed that “whatever can be done by the pupils, the teacher should never do himself.” The system engaged the students in the Academy’s daily operations, including maintaining department or classroom order, recording student performance, and mentoring younger students. Maeser instructed faculty to identify students who needed help, so that competent tutors could be assigned to work with them. . . . Maeser called this the “monitorial system.” It helped the students become “responsible for something outside of their own individual concerns, but essential for the comfort and well-being for the whole of the little community (the school or class) of which each of them forms a part.”10
Maeser formalized student peer teaching in the following way:
Once a week, [students met in] small groups to discuss what [they had studied]. Each [discussion] group was led by an older student called a repetitor. One BYA instructor observed the effectiveness of this approach: “A free-for-all discussion now took place which did more to arouse interest and rivet conviction than ten times the amount of passive listening would have done.”11
In the run up to this meeting, a phrase kept coming to me from section 88 of the Doctrine and Covenants: “teach one another,” “teach one another,” “teach one another” (vv. 77, 118). As I learn about Maeser’s system, I feel confirmed in my mind that there is more we can and should do to foster active learning. This appears to be part (albeit an all-but-forgotten part) of our institutional patrimony. In both the School of the Prophets and in the Brigham Young Academy, learners were expected to “teach one another.” The BYA instructor said that students learned ten times as much by discussing and teaching each other than they would have learned by “passive listening.” Interestingly, this figure just about duplicates the findings of educational researchers who have evaluated the effective retention rates of students learning through teaching others.12
Now I do not regard students teaching other students, or any other mere technique for that matter, as a magic bullet for improving learning. Indeed, I have experienced some pretty ineffective classes where faculty devolved almost all responsibility for instruction to the students. Moreover, I personally still prefer to mix lecture and discussion along with other pedagogical strategies. Nor will it surprise you that, as an English teacher, one of these strategies is writing. I am a strong believer in requiring students to put their ideas into writing and to present them orally for class discussion and critique. Writing and discussing what one thinks—these constitute highly effective, time-tested active learning strategies. As Sir Francis Bacon said of education: “Reading maketh a full man; conference [i.e., conversation] a ready man; and writing an exact man.”13 I know of no substitute for writing and conversation in teaching critical thinking.
But I also know that I learn by teaching. I learned best how to write by teaching others to write. My understanding of literature and scriptures has been immeasurably enhanced by teaching them. And I first learned to appreciate many great books of the Western tradition and many great issues that have engaged the modern world by being invited as a senior at BYU to proctor classes in these subjects for new freshmen. We learn by teaching. It is a powerful way to capture and communicate the light. So I come away from the Maeser displays thinking about how to strengthen peer tutoring, teaching assistantships, and other opportunities for students to learn by teaching.
Mentoring: The Means for Passing on the Light
The final display I want to discuss immediately follows the display on Brother Maeser. This may be my favorite room in the exhibit. It contains rotating displays of faculty and staff at BYU up through the mid-twentieth century who have augmented and transmitted the light of the Y to students and colleagues. As I peruse some of the panels in the room, I see some names that I recognize—like James Talmage, who called Karl G. Maeser “my second father,”14 and Alice Louise Reynolds, who at first feared Maeser but with her sister later came to “love him as we have seldom loved anyone else.”15 I am reminded by these comments that mentor comes from the name of the surrogate father Odysseus appointed to care for his son Telemachus. To be a mentor can involve a profoundly personal and transformative relationship, comparable to that of a surrogate parent.
I also see the names of others whom I have not heard of like Brigham Thomas Higgs, who introduced the student employment program on campus, and Delbert Brigham Brown, a custodian in the Smith Fieldhouse who became a wise counselor to hundreds of students. Delbert Brown once found a student’s wallet with a risqué picture in it. When a young boy came to claim it, Brother Brown took out his own wallet and showed him pictures of his wife and daughters, encouraging the boy with a budding pornography problem to tuck these other kinds of pictures into his wallet and into his mind. As I read such stories, I am reminded that many unnamed individuals have kindled the light of the Y, including administrators and staff. As Joseph B. Keeler, one of Maeser’s first twenty-nine students and himself an unsung hero of our tradition, observed: “Deep down in the heart of this great school, there are noble deeds untold.”16 I reflect, with gratitude, on the noble deeds of our current staff and administrators who influence students for good. These include secretaries, counselors, bookkeepers, managers, advisors, custodians, and on and on. So many have played and do play formative roles in the lives of students. They brighten the light that emanates from the Y. As I think of this, I am filled with gratitude that the support side of BYU has embraced the “Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal” of giving up their slots to be used to hire additional faculty. This is simply unheard of in the academy, but it falls squarely within the tradition of mentoring that is honored in this room, which celebrates all mentors, great and small, who have made BYU what it is.
On the far wall is displayed “Mentoring: The Lifeblood of Our Tradition.” The panels remind me that our initiatives in mentoring are not new. BYU has long been blessed by the likes of mentors such as Joseph K. Nicholes, who built a chemistry department of doctorally prepared faculty though he himself was prevented by circumstance from finishing his own PhD at Stanford, and little Tommy Martin, who began his life as a coal miner in the English midlands and went on to excel as a teacher in the field of soil science. Tommy would select students of high potential and say, “Look here, young man, don’t you know that you have some great intellectual possibilities?”17 and then help them plan their careers and win fellowships. Of his former students, 150 earned advanced degrees in agronomy18 and 75 were on faculties at universities throughout the United States and Canada.19 His students became known across the country as “the Thomas L. Martin boys.”20 Reading about Joseph Nicholes, Tommy Martin, Harvey Fletcher, Florence J. Madsen, and many others confirms that we are on the right track in pursuing a mentoring model. Mentoring is a part of our patrimony.
On the way out of the exhibit, I see video clips of current faculty discussing their experiences at the Y. One particularly touched my heart. It is Mary Farahnakian, from Theatre and Media Arts, telling how she found God at BYU. She said, “I came to BYU not knowing anything, but BYU taught me not the secular education; I got my spiritual life. I learned who I am. BYU gave me my God.” Her story captures the experience of countless students and faculty alike, whose relationship to God has been deepened by learning in the light at BYU.
I Get My Light from God
As I walk out of the Joseph F. Smith Building and back across campus, I recall a sundial that once stood near the stairs leading down to the fieldhouse. It was a gift from the Class of 1916. Engraved on one side were the words “I get my light from God.” For BYU to remain true to its finest traditions, we too must get our light from God. His is the light we are instructed to hold up to the world (see 3 Ne. 18:24). Consequently, if BYU is to shine as a city on the hill, it must ever be with reflected glory. We must get our light from God.
Lost in these thoughts, I look up at the mountains and recall a scouting event I participated in years ago. Scout troops from all across Utah climbed peaks with large mirrors. In the early morning light, each troop watched for a signal from a troop on another peak. When they saw the light flash, they deployed their own mirror to pass on the signal to other scouts on other peaks. It was a thrilling sight: light flashing from peak to peak all across the state—much like the image depicted in the movie The Return of the King, when Pippin lights the beacon in Gondor to rally the Riders of Rohan.
Brothers and sisters, we are like those who stand upon mountain peaks, responsible for transmitting light in these last days darkening with signs of battle before the return of the King. Having seen the light from others who have scaled similar peaks, our task is to reflect light to those on the next peak—over and over, from peak to peak, across miles and years until the King returns. We are light bearers in a precious tradition of learning in the light.
I use the word tradition deliberately, keenly aware of its etymology. Tradition literally means something that is handed off—from the Latin traditio, “to hand over.” As we have seen in the recent Olympic relay races, handoffs can be muffed. Batons are sometimes dropped, just as footballs are sometimes fumbled. So are traditions. Some deserve this fate, but others do not. It takes wisdom, attention, and deliberate effort to identify which traditions to preserve and to successfully pass them on to the next generation. The consequences of failure can be dire. Dropping the baton disqualifies the relay team; fumbling the football turns the initiative over to the opposition. Likewise, intergenerational institutions are always but one generation away from extinction. A successful intergenerational institution, like a 400-meter relay team or a football team, requires good handoffs. The exhibit offers an important means to pass on the best traditions of education in Zion, to keep the flame alive that has lighted the Y over the years. We plan to build it into new faculty and new student orientations and, where appropriate, into the curriculum. I again encourage you to find time to visit the exhibit and learn about our traditions, for we are all players in handing off the BYU tradition to succeeding generations.
I don’t want to muff the handoff. Not infrequently I wonder how I am doing in preserving the traditions at BYU that most deserve preservation, in casting aside unproductive traditions, and in developing new traditions consistent with our mission. Have I seen clearly what needs to be passed on, what should be developed, and what should be discarded in order to burnish BYU as an institution of light? We all occupy our positions on the peaks at BYU only a brief time. May we use our moment in the sun here at BYU to learn in the light and pass on that light to others. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
