What Shall You Teach?

My brethren and sisters:

I am glad to be with you. I count it a great opportunity and a great challenge to meet with you and to speak with you as you face the year that lies ahead. It is an opportunity because you are engaged in a vibrant, forward-going work, and you breathe that spirit. It is a challenge because you know so much. You represent in your presence on this campus the wisdom of all the world and of all time. Among you there is known most of the knowledge existing in the world today, whether it be of the stars of the universe, of the rocks of the earth, of the history of nations and peoples, of the languages they speak, of the operations of governments, of the laws of economics, of the behavior of the atom, of the nature of electricity, of religion and ethics, of love and hate, of the myriad forces and influences controlling our existence.

This is a wondrous thing. You have garnered the wisdom of the ages in all these fields.

In the mass you frighten me. You know so much, and I know so little. And then I begin to break you down--Brother so and so, Sister so and so. You become warm and human and friendly--kindred spirits, associates engaged together in a great task, and associates, really, of the Father of us all, engaged with Him in the supreme work of bringing to pass the immortality and eternal life of His children.

As I talk with you I seek His inspiration. I need it. I believe that you need it, and I pray that we shall have it.

There is a tremendous statement in the Doctrine and Covenants. I have read it in meetings I have held with missionaries in many parts of the world. It was given through revelation in May of 1831. I think it applies not only to missionaries, but to you also who teach in this great institution. Listen to a question and an answer:

"Wherefore, I the Lord ask you this question, unto what were you ordained?"The answer: "To preach my gospel by the Spirit, even the Comforter which was sent forth to teach the truth."

Then follows this promise to those who teach by the Spirit: "Wherefore, he that preacheth and he that receiveth, understand one another, and both are edified and rejoice together." (D&C 50:13,14,22.)

I pray that as we talk tonight we shall understand one another and that both shall be edified and rejoice together, and I pray that both you and your students will have a similar experience in the months that lie ahead.

In a few days you will face these students, the thousands upon thousands who will gather here from the distant places. I have met some of them recently--a shy girl from Nevada whose coming here represents the fulfillment of the hope of her life and the dream of her parents; a disillusioned girl from California, a little tarnished in her standards, whose presence on this campus is an answer to the pleadings, the anxious, tearful pleadings of her mother; a young man also from California, one of a handful chosen from hundreds of thousands of bright high school seniors, winner of a prized scholarship that might have taken him to any university in America, but who has come to BYU to refine his talents and increase his knowledge; a boy from the Orient, small and frail and frightened. All of his earnings, all of the hoarded savings of his parents have been gathered to send him here that you might teach him. I could go on at length concerning these young men and women who are coming to you--the spoiled son from the wealthy home; the occasional lad who is sent to be reformed; the eager, bright young men and women who have been out in the world as missionaries.

They have come to be taught. What will you teach them? That is the question I pose tonight as the theme of my talk. What will you teach?

You will, of course, teach them English, and I hope you will teach them well and with some inspiration, particularly the freshmen, in the art of communication. You will teach them the other languages they seek, and the science, the mathematics, the economics, the sociology, the accounting, the psychology, the theology for which they will register.

These and others are the skills in which you are trained and for which they come. But I hope this will be only a part of the training they will receive. I do not disparage its importance. It is essential in the world in which we live, and I believe it is incumbent upon our young people to educate their minds and their hands for the tremendously competitive, automated world that lies ahead.

But there is another education without which the skills they learn may lead only to their destruction. I refer to the education of the heart, of the conscience, of the character--these indefinable parts of our personalities that determine so greatly what we are and what we do.

I picked up in the barbershop yesterday the most recent issue of Look magazine. The cover carried the title, "Morality USA," and then the questions: "Do we need a new code to solve our crisis of immorality? Have the churches failed? Has money become God? Is sexual morality gone?" I turned to page 74 and read a provocative article. I have read several such of late as men of government, industry, and the arts have expressed themselves on the moral crisis that evidently is sweeping over the land.

I am not one to believe that all was good in the long ago and that all is bad in the present. I am grateful to be alive today. I think it the greatest age the world has known. But I am likewise confident that there is a disease of epidemic proportions raging about us. We had better be aware of it, recognize its symptoms, seek its causes, and try to set up safeguards against it.

I was at a recent stake conference in a West Coast city. While a law-enforcement officer--a member of a stake presidency--was speaking in the chapel, a car was stolen from the parking lot. At the close of the meeting the officer handed me the FBI Uniform Crime reports for 1962 from which he had been speaking. I thumbed through the summary. What a sad story it told concerning America--a 6 per cent increase in serious crimes in a single year, from 1961 to 1962; a 9 per cent increase in auto thefts; arrests of young people under eighteen up 9 per cent, with female arrests increasing at a faster rate than male arrests.

I suppose that many of you have read the Look article. It is not unique among writings that have appeared recently, but it is highly readable, and I shall take occasion to refer to it in this discussion.

I return to my theme. What will you teach? A father in the Northwest has three children enrolling here at the end of this week. He can ill afford the expense of purchasing board and room for them when they could live at home and go to a state university at much less cost. They would likely secure there comparable training in the secular subjects they wish to study. But he and his wife are going without much to send them to Provo so that you may teach them, not only the subjects they might learn within five miles of their home, but also what to their parents is much more important.

The Look article said:
We are witnessing the death of the old morality...The established moral guidelines have been yanked from our hands...We are left floundering in a money-motivated, sex obsessed, big-city dominated society. We must figure out for ourselves how to apply the traditional moral principles to the problems of our times. Many find this burden too heavy.I should like to comment that most of our young people will not and cannot figure out for themselves "how to apply the traditional moral principles to the problems of our times." They "find this burden too heavy." They must have help. They must have guidance. They must have example. And you are here to provide these.

The answer is found in the word of the Lord. It must be given voice directly and indirectly in the classrooms of this institution. It must be fortified with your example.

What will you teach?

Religious truths and moral principles. Briefly I should like to suggest three or four.

The first is work. There is no substitute for it. Jehovah established the law when He declared, "In the sweat of thy face shall thou eat bread." (Genesis 3:19.)

I quote from a recent KSL editorial, quoting a business executive: "This is the great era of the goof-off, the age of the half-done job. The land from coast to coast has been enjoying a stampede away from responsibility. It is populated with laundry men who won't iron shirts, with waiters who won't serve, with carpenters who will come around someday maybe, with executives whose minds are on the golf course, with teachers who demand a single salary schedule so that achievement cannot be rewarded nor poor work punished, with students who take cinch courses because the hard ones make them think, with spiritual delinquents of all kinds who have been triumphantly determined to enjoy what was known until the present crisis as 'the new leisure.'

"I think that our people are becoming sick of this goofing off. The reason I do not know, but I will guess that we are gradually beginning to realize that history is repeating itself. The Russians are doing a wonderful job as the barbarians in our modern historical drama. But we are outdoing them in our superlative imitation of Rome. We may lack a few of the refinements of Rome's final decadence, but we have the two hour lunch, the three-day weekend, and the all-day coffee break. And, if you want to, you can buy for $275, a jewelled pill box, with a built-in musical alarm that reminds you (but not too harshly) that it's time to take your tranquilizer.

"Wherefore, I the Lord ask you this question, unto what were you ordained?"

We are witnessing the death of the old morality...The established moral guidelines have been yanked from our hands...We are left floundering in a money-motivated, sex obsessed, big-city dominated society. We must figure out for ourselves how to apply the traditional moral principles to the problems of our times. Many find this burden too heavy.
"Unquestionably, we are in a battle for survival. We must get our people into the battle. But first we have to get some battle into our people."

Some two years ago a Boeing 707 jet took off from Idlewild airport. It rose into the sky and then suddenly plunged into the Jamaica mud taking eighty-nine people to their deaths. The months of investigation that followed brought the conclusion that a workman in a New Jersey subcontractor's plant had carelessly handled a wire in putting together a servo mechanism that was assembled into the plane in the Boeing plant in Seattle. This all-important little wire, smaller than a pencil, connected with evident neglect, had caused a short circuit, wresting the plane from the control of the pilot and plunging it into the mud, with a fearsome loss of life and property.

Shoddy workmanship, lack of pride in labor, the repeated coffee breaks that rob employers of the time of those they hire are all characteristic of a flagrant dishonesty and a warped sense of obligation that afflicts so many of our people.

I should like to say to you tonight that one of the greatest values that could be taught those who come to this institution is the virtue of honest work. Knowledge without labor is profitless. Knowledge with labor is genius.

The next I should like to suggest is virtue--just plain, simple virtue that is taught and exemplified without rationalization or equivocation.

Our youth cannot be shielded from the influences that push them toward immorality. They are all about us. The Look article quotes Professor Lester A. Kirkendall of Oregon State University as saying: "Our young people are not sex-obsessed. The culture is." It is all about us.

An article that came with your Sunday paper last week made the dire prediction that by 1984 our society may reach a state in which pre marital relations are the general rule. The writer concludes with the belief that we are not headed for sin, but that we are stumbling towards, of all things, a new morality.

Notwithstanding the much discussed changes in the mores of morality, there is no adequate substitute for virtue. The old standard is challenged on every campus in America. In the minds of some who come here this fall it will be challenged. But this is the University of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. God has not abrogated His commandments given of old: "Thou shalt not commit adultery." "Thou shalt not covet." And we might add, "Thou shalt not commit fornication." The violation of these commandments in this, as in any other age, brings only regret, sorrow, loss of self-respect, and in many cases, tragedy.

I think we are particularly vulnerable here, because so many of our students are away from home without parental restraint. They go about the campus holding hands; they study together; they socialize together; they see one another morning, noon and night, week after week, month after month. Thank the Lord that for the most part they have the self discipline to exercise proper restraint. They need your constantly sustaining influence to offset the influences which would destroy them.

We have an obligation on this campus--a deep and serious obligation--to safeguard those who are entrusted to us by their parents. Those parents expect you to avoid rationalization or hedging on these matters, teaching the standards which the Lord has laid down, and standing as examples before those you teach.

The next I mention is integrity. It is a trite and hackneyed word. You English teachers might tell your students to use something more descriptive. I know of no other word that has quite the same inclusive meaning. It covers a multitude of virtues that are slipping from under us. The erosion of it is one of the obvious things of our day.

This is the age of the "fast buck." Look quotes one young businessman as saying: "Making $40,000 a year will be like getting an A on your report card. How far will you go to win your A? Many an American will connive, lie, stomp over friends and competitors."

I have a fear that this tendency, which preoccupies many graduates of our schools in this country, is only an extension of the fierce competition to get a high grade point average in undergraduate studies because of the exaggerated importance we place on grade point averages. The implication may be resented, but I am sometimes fearful that we are distorting our values among students as seriously as some of our graduates are distorting their values as they live in the world.

I fear that too frequently the A in math is like the $40,000 income- get it! No matter what. Get it!!

I am not against excellence. I am very much in favor of achievement. But I am most concerned about integrity. And as I have read of the cheating that goes on in universities across the land, I have hoped that we are not seriously afflicted here, and that somehow we are building into our students a recognition that integrity is more important than a 3.9 average.

Finally, I mention faith in God. If we fail to strengthen the faith of all who come here, then we had better lock the doors of these magnificent buildings which have come of the sacrifices of those who with tithes and offerings have sought to keep the commandments of God.

I believe you are conscientiously trying to do it. I am satisfied there is no other institution in America that has within its halls the spirit that is found here. But I fear we may not be doing enough in some instances. I interviewed a young man in the Orient the other day. He was having trouble as a missionary. I asked him what was wrong. He said, "I have no testimony."

"Did you ever have one?" I asked him.

"Yes, I think I once had."

"What happened?" I inquired.

"I lost it in Provo."

I explored further, and I think there may be some truth in his reply. I am convinced, however, that he is the exception. I think, by and large, that you are doing a magnificent work.

I talked with a young man only this afternoon in my office--a handsome, wonderful young man who comes from the East. He is leaving next week for a mission. He looks like the kind we can send with pride as a representative of the Lord Jesus Christ and as an agent of His great Church. I thumbed through his file. I noticed that he was baptized only two years ago. I asked, "Where did you join the Church?"

He said, "At Brigham Young University. That is where I learned to know the Lord. I caught the spirit of this work from a wonderful man who taught me there."

I make a plea to all of you to try a little harder to breathe a little more of the spirit of testimony into all that you teach. Teach faith in God, that Father of us all, the Creator of the universe, a living, personal Being to whom we may go in prayer with full expectation that our prayers will be heard and answered according to His will and wisdom.

Teach faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Word that was made flesh and dwelt among us, the only perfect life that was ever lived, the exemplar for all men, the Lamb who was sacrificed for the sins of the world, our Redeemer and our Savior.

There is no need to try to justify, to equivocate, to rationalize, to enlarge, to explain. Why should we equivocate? Why should we rationalize? I give you these great words of Paul to Timothy: "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord." (II Timothy 1:7-8.)

I wish every member of this institution would print that and put it on his mirror where he would see it every morning as he begins his day. "Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord."

Teach the simple, straightforward truth that came out of the vision of the boy Joseph Smith. Teach the reality of that vision and the manifestations that followed, that brought into being the restored Church of Jesus Christ--the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Your students have come to you to learn. Teach them these truths as facts, for so they are. It is expected that you have testimony in your hearts of these things. You will bless their lives in sharing that spirit of testimony with them. Your doctoral degree, your exalted position before them, the stature of your learning, the example of you life will lend credibility and strength to your testimony and that which is taught shall be caught and become of the very fiber of those who come to listen, and learn, and follow.

The Lord bless you, my beloved brethren and sisters, in the marvelous year that lies ahead, in the great opportunity and challenge that are yours, I humbly pray, as I leave with you my testimony of the divinity of this work, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Member of the Council of the Twelve Apostles,
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Member of the Board of Trustees, Brigham Young University
September 17, 1963

September 17, 1963