[The Campus Education Week 1963 Devotional was delivered to B.Y.U. students and visiting high school students being recruited to attend B.Y.U.  In addition to other accomplishments mentioned in Public Relations Department Resignation Announcement in February 1968, Earl C. Crockett was instrumental in forming an adult education program and expanding “Education Weeks” mentioned in this talk.  Although it was not formally announced at the time of this talk, he was also Acting President of B.Y.U.  A position he held for 18 months.  His contributions before B.Y.U. will be outlined in a separate document. edc]

 EDUCATION, A FAMILY RESPONSIBILITY  

VICE PRESIDENT EARL C. CROCKETT
Brigham Young University

 Education Week Devotional Address
June 11, 1963

 I consider it an honor to be allowed to speak at one of the Education Week assemblies. I note from the literature there are some outstanding speakers arranged for this week, and so I feel that I am in very excellent company in being included among the group. We trust that all of you heard the fine talk yesterday given by Cleon Skousen. 

 Before assuming my responsibilities here at Brigham Young University as Academic Vice President six years ago, I was an economist by training, by teaching, and by other experience. When introduced to speak, a few months ago, an economist friend of mine warned his audience that they were taking a chance in listening to him. He reminded the group that the Sermon on the Mount could be read in 12 minutes, that Lincoln's Gettysburg-address contains only 266 words, that the Ten Commandments has only 197 words and that the Declaration of Independence is only 300 words long; but that the old OPA government order to reduce the price of cabbages, written by an economist, contains 26, 911 words. Allegedly, it appears that if you know what you are saying it can be said briefly--if not, it takes more time to create the proper confusion. It has been said that economists and lawyers take longer to say or write messages and in a more confusing way than any other groups of professional people. I trust, however, that you are not as confused at the end of my talk as was the woman who tried to follow a tip passed on by a home economist in a newspaper article when she was reputed to have said, “Lettuce won't turn brown if you put your head in a plastic bag before placing it in a refrigerator.”

 It was suggested that I speak this morning on the subject of “Education, A FAMILY Responsibility.” Lately we have been hearing much about the family in society. The second-week of May of this year was set apart as “Christian Family Week” by the Protestant Churches of America and Canada, and the theme they had this year was, “When your family worships God every day in the week.”

 In our L. D. S. Church we have not adopted a “family week”; it appears that we have adopted a “family year,” or maybe a “family decade.” As never before, the General Authorities, the Auxiliaries, and Priesthood groups are stressing the vital role of the home and the family in our community, in our Church, and in society generally. Indicative of this emphasis, ward teaching, as you know, is now called and referred to officially as home teaching.  Also, the correlation program in the Church, which we shall soon be hearing much more about, is developing a close tie and good articulation between the home and Church programs.

 Other evidences of an increasing emphasis upon the L. D. S. family and home, at least for this year, include the Gospel Doctrine class in Sunday School which has a course of study, “Gospel Living in the Home”; the Relief Society, some lessons of which are stressing the same subject; and our Church periodicals—the Era, the Instructor, and the Church News Section of the Deseret News are all featuring articles this year on the family and the home. Thus it is most fitting that the B. Y. U. Education Week theme this year is “Family Togetherness--the Challenge of our Times.”

 At B. Y. U. we have many evidences that education is a family responsibility. Tithing monies from the various families of the Church defray a major portion of the capital and operating costs of the school. Even so, many parents sustain great sacrifice in sending their sons and daughters here for four or more years of schooling. It often becomes a major project for all members of the family to save and pool their funds to keep Jim or Jane in school. Moreover, wives of married students also do their part. Out of the 1,227 members of the graduating class this spring, 53 per cent were married. Many of the student wives worked to help sustain the husbands in school as well as perhaps to buy groceries and shoes for a rapidly growing nucleus of a young family of children. Further evidence of education being a family responsibility, this May graduation exercises included at least 20 married couples both partners of whom received their degrees at the same time.

 I invite you to visit Wyview Village sometime if you have not already done so. It is a little village, so called, of temporary houses used as homes for married students at the north edge of our campus. There are streets and sidewalks and lawns and flowers and many small children. During working hours, the children may be left at a day nursery while the husband attends classes and perhaps the wife attends also or more likely she works on the campus as a secretary. This is indeed an example of education through shared family responsibility. Next fall our new housing facilities for married students known as Wymount Terrace, planned for housing 462 couples, will be fully occupied, although in the beginning not entirely by married students. These days are quite different from the time when I was an undergraduate student: Then it was rather uncommon; it was almost a curiosity to have an undergraduate student attending school as a married man or married woman. I was an exception. My sweetheart, who is on the stage this morning, helped put me through college. We were married after I completed the sophomore year, and I attended school five years after that --not because I failed classes, but I went on for graduate work and she helped me get my doctoral degree. This is common today, but it was uncommon back in the 1920's.

 I wish to urge all of you here to encourage your children, your grandchildren, nieces or nephews, brothers or sisters to continue with their education through high school and if possible also through college. You young people present, I would like to appeal to you especially to continue your high school education and also come to college.

 As never before in history, an education is rapidly becoming a requirement for success and especially for leadership in many, if not most, of the important economic, political and social activities of life.

 Brigham Young had only eleven days of formal education in his entire life, yet he was one of the great pioneering and religious leaders of his generation, if not of our dispensation. This was possible because Brigham was endowed with exceptional natural talents and was ordained by our Father in heaven to lead his people. Even so, President Young often admitted his handicap in not possessing more formal schooling. As evidence of his realization of the vital importance of education, even in the past century, Brigham founded two great universities--the University of Deseret (now the University of Utah) and Brigham Young University.  Inscribed on a plaque in the foyer of our new administration building, to the north of us on the north quadrangle, are these immortal words of Brigham Young, “Education is the power to think clearly, to act well in the world's work, and the power to appreciate life.” And so Brigham really knew what an education meant even though he had very little formal education himself.  But he was an exceptional person.

 In these days of the shrinking value of the dollar, it has been argued that a college education is very expensive and therefore beyond the reach of many deserving young people. It has also been quipped that “college bred” means a “four-year loaf on father's dough.” Seriously, although the cost is high in terms of time and money, a college education is in any event one of today's best bargains. Actually, the tuition and fees charged at B. Y. U. have risen very little during the last ten or fifteen years, while prices generally have gone up very much.

 As a consequence of the relatively small increases at B. Y. U., I would like to draw some comparisons with some of the other universities. The tuition and fees at Cornell and Columbia next year will be $1, 700 for the year; at Northwestern, $1,500; Stanford, $1,400; Dartmouth $1,800; and Harvard, $1, 760. These high amounts are in striking contrast with the $280 per year that is charged at B.Y.U.  Therefore, today a student pays less than one-third of the cost of his education here in our school, even though he pays a full tuition. The remainder of cost--the other two-thirds --is paid by the Church from tithing funds.

 We are confident that this money spent on higher education for the youth of the Church is a sound investment, which will pay rich dividends in the service and in leadership to be provided by these same individuals in the years ahead.

 While the Church and society generally are being benefited, the educational cost is also an investment to the individual. And some of what I would like to say now for the next two or three minutes or a little longer I would like you young people in the group to pay particular attention to.  Getting a college education will enhance earning power.  A college degree does not guarantee wealth, but the chances of making a comfortable income are improved by college training. The United States Census Bureau reports that heads of families with college degrees make an average income of $9,300 a year.  Families headed by high school graduates with no college credit at all, receive an average of $6,300. Therefore, on the basis of this, it appears that a degree is worth about $3,000 per year in earning power.

 Supporting this estimate, the American Council on Education pointed out several years ago that a well-rounded bachelor of arts degree from a good college or university in additional earning power over the-lifetime of the recipient amounts to between $100,000 to $125,000. These dollar figures, of course, say nothing about the other values that we hope accrue to the person who has put forth his or her best effort in taking advantage of opportunities during four years of college life.

 

Dr. Harold L. Yochum, President of Capital University, points out that:

 “Certainly, an education worthy of the name should increase our proficiency in the various media of communication, the ability to read and listen intelligently and critically, the ability to speak and write intelligibly and effectively. The two-way skill in communication is a vital factor in one's relationships with others and in one's vocation. Words, like pictures, are symbols of ideas, and you cannot always draw pictures for people to get across your ideas.

 Certainly, an education worthy of the name should impart some degree of culture, appreciation of music and poetry and painting, all the treasures of former civilizations, which are made so readily available to us today if we will but take them. This is not something for only the wealthy or the aged to enjoy--now is the time for you to appreciate and enjoy all the cultural masterpieces of man's creativity.

 Certainly, an education worthy of the name should inspire us to sound thinking, sensible decisions, sane self-control. Certainly, an education worthy of the name should broaden our horizons of interest and understanding, deepen our convictions and commitments, uplift our standards and ideals, extend our vision back into all the recorded experiences and achievements of man in the past, forward into the almost limitless possibilities of the future.

 All this, and much more, I would read into a phrase which the famous educator, Alfred North Whitehead, used when he wrote that, whatever else education is or does, it should provide “the habitual vision of greatness.”  How distressing it is to note the prevalence of small men in big places, of small thinking about big problems, of narrow and shortsighted policies in the face of far-reaching implications and consequences! The interracial and international tensions, juvenile delinquency, and parental delinquency, low moral standards and behavior of so many men and women, which fill up our newspapers every day, indicate how imperative it is that we catch and cultivate the habitual vision of greatness.”

 As never before, it takes a lot of education for individuals to keep abreast of current developments. In the field of science and technology alone, giant strides are being made in our generation. Gains are being made in other fields, but perhaps not quite as dramatically. A cartoonist recently depicted vividly the situation of this rapid dynamic growth by having a very small youngster say to his mother, “Phooey on Little Red Riding Hood! What's the newest thing in solid fuel propellants?” Something of the magnitude of the influence of science in the modern world is revealed by the fact that over 50 per cent of all the scientists who have ever lived are living and working right now! Parenthetically I may add that the Church is accelerating its program in a similar fashion. Twenty-five per cent or one-fourth of all missionaries who have gone forth to preach and teach the gospel in the 163 years of the history of the Church in this dispensation have gone out during the last five years. I don't know whether you knew that or not.

 Indicative of the need for ever more education to merely keep abreast of the time is the fact that the human family is doubling its storehouse of knowledge every ten years--so fast, in fact, that some areas of knowledge are practically unteachable.

 Historically we are children. This continent was discovered less than 500 years ago; it began to be settled merely 340 years ago, while much of it has been occupied only during the last 100 or 150 years, and this is certainly true of Western America. Most of us have traveled only a few hundred miles or a few thousand miles during our lifetime; yet we are suddenly confronted with the problem of getting acquainted with a universe rather than a world.  And all of the problems man has inherited on earth may well be magnified a thousand times in the sky. No one can possibly know what may be in store for mankind as we push our bounds of knowledge into the unknown environment. It has been said “Never before in the history of mankind has man stood with one foot in his primitive origins and the other foot poised to walk on a star.”

 It took man thousands of years to emerge from the role of a nomadic hunter and a gleaner of the fruits of nature for his food to developing agriculture. And then, only 200 years ago did he bring forth the Industrial Revolution. But since 1945, three new and distinct eras have come to pass--
the Fission Age, the Fusion Age, and the Space Age, and all of these new ages have been accompanied by increasingly important use of automation, which is revolutionizing our lives more than we realize.

 These changes have many implications for our educational system as well as indicating the kind of training, which should be received by you young people if you are to serve well and make maximum contributions in the future. Professional workers were less than five per cent of our labor force in 1900; by 1975 they will constitute about 15 per cent. Farm workers in 1900 were nearly 40 per cent of our labor force; by 1975 they will represent little more than five per cent. Even today there are ten million fewer people on the farms than in1900, and they are feeding 50 million more people, and yet are plagued by surpluses. And what about unskilled labor?  In 1900, unskilled laborers were over 12 per cent of the labor force; in 1975 they will be less than five per cent.

 These figures may be hard to follow, but they are significant. They indicate that continually it is becoming more necessary for productively employed people to have a skill--to have education. Our high schools, colleges, and universities must meet this challenge and perform better than they have in the past. We must provide not only a high quality of education but also a greater quantity for more people. You teen-agers, I want to impress upon you the importance of staying in school.

 The next ten years will see 13 million new jobs opening up, but 12 million will require trained workers, leaving only one million unskilled jobs for the taking. During this same decade it is predicted that seven million youths will drop out of school, producing seven million untrained job hunters to fill one million unskilled jobs.

 Today’s lost generation is gangs in slums and boys and girls, many of whom are down on the farm, unable to find work. There are 700, 000 of them now and their numbers are growing every month. They have no skills in a world spinning madly into specialization.  Only one out of ten youngsters now on farms will find work there.

 Recently a 17-year-old boy with a predictable case of wanderlust and no high school diploma roamed far from his East Coast suburban home, ending up in Los Angeles. The frantic family finally received this message: “Was interviewed along with 27 other boys for a gas station attendant's job and got it.”  He was personally thrilled, but he was an eyewitness to the fast disappearing job of the unskilled worker.

 A news release just yesterday announced that teen-agers now make up one-fourth of the entire nation's unemployed and that most of these are individuals who have dropped out of high school before finishing.

 Need we say more about the importance of keeping our youth in school through high school, certainly, and if possible through college?

 Dr. Stinnett points, out another development in our society, which places great responsibility upon our educational system. Today, within each family group there is the problem of the fruitful use of leisure time.  According to Stinnett, soon each American will have one-half of all his time to himself for his very own, to do with as he will. Thus, a persistent dream of man will be a reality. But this fact is not necessarily significant or good by itself. What is important is what man does with his
leisure. If we can do no more than indulge spectatorial, in passively soaking up TV shows, surfeiting ourselves with slogans and stereotypes, in short, in squandering our time in mental, moral and physical vegetation, then, concludes Dr. Stinnett, this added time will prove to be a curse, not a blessing,

 Here is a new frontier for education, and I am happy to report that Brigham Young University is giving serious thought to the problem and making some headway in revising courses and curriculums, in developing adult education programs, in providing classes for retraining of workers and for teaching wise use of leisure time.  Even the leadership weeks (now known, of course, as Education Weeks) are being greatly expanded, extended, and have been modified and improved to keep abreast of new developments and changes in society.

 At B. Y. U., we are mindful of the crying need in the modern world and in our Church for trained and inspired leadership. That is why two or three years ago we started an honors program at this school for superior students, many of whom attend on scholarships.

 It is man's brain that gives him his vast advantage over all animals, however superior they may be in size, strength, speed, claws, instincts and endurance.  Man can analyze and generalize and put ideas into words so that they may be exchanged, criticized, recorded and transmitted.  The experience of individuals is thus incorporated into a rich heritage of common culture that is the essence of civilization.

 It has been said that ordinary persons have been able to multiply upon the face of the earth and live in relative health and comfort mainly because of the presence of occasional exceptional individuals. The main additions to our stock of knowledge, permitting civilization to advance, have come from uncommon men and women those with exceptional ability or exceptional ambition or both, and of course education always helps them.

 Last year I spoke to our group of honor students at a special occasion.  The specific admonitions I gave them, I believe, are appropriate for repeating here to this group. You are all leaders in your respective communities, or else are training for leadership in our Church and in society.

 First, I reminded the group I addressed that they should be humble relative to their talents, skills, and mental abilities. Remember, they are God-given. Have self-confidence, but do not be arrogant.

 Second, be industrious. In your classes, do more than is required by your instructors.  Do not be satisfied with just getting by, even though you are getting A's and B’s.

 Third, have intellectual curiosity. Question everything, taking nothing for granted.  Branch out from your subject-matter fields, your minors and your majors. Read the great books of this and past generations.

 Fourth, accept responsibility.  Aim for leadership positions. Be interested in your fellowmen and have a desire to serve.

Fifth, watch your physical condition. Take regular exercise. Have good eating habits; obtain sufficient sleep.  Scholars sometimes are tempted to neglect their health and physical well being.

 Sixth, above all, have a good character. Live a moral life. Be intellectually honest. Do not compromise the principles of correct conduct.

 Seventh, and finally, in quoting from the New Testament,

 If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all. (Mark 9:35.)

 And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant:

Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. (Matthew 20:27-28.)

 Returning directly to our theme, “Education, a Family Responsibility,” we may say that whatever is wanted intensively enough can usually be obtained. Especially when a family is united in an effort, the accomplishment of the chosen goal becomes easier. Of course, there are sometimes limits on how much should properly be attempted. In the desire for a formal education, an individual student, his parents, or perhaps his wife, if he is married, may expect too much.  He may try for a degree in a field, which is too exacting or too difficult for him. This can lead to frustration and unhappiness. You may recall the example given by Tolstoy.

 Tolstoy tells the story of Pakhom, a Russian peasant. He lived on a small farm with his wife and sons. They were contented and happy. They had enough land. Then someone began taunting Pakhom for not having ambition. He ought to want more land, they said. Ambition began to eat away. He sold his farm, moved east, bought larger acres, worked night and day, and added more land. The whole family worked from morning to night; they no longer had time for one another or for their neighbors. Finally, they moved still farther east to the foothills of the great mountains.  There Pakhom drove a bargain with a wandering tribe of Bashkirs who owned all this country. For all the money he had, Pakhom could get all the land that he could walk or run around from sunup to sundown. In his eagerness for land, he set himself too large an enclosure. As the sun reached the horizon and was to set, he sighted the Bashkirs cheering him on to the finish. Exhausted, his feet like lead, pain making him almost blind, he pushed on. As the sun sank, Pakhom, twenty feet from the goal, stumbled and fell.  The blood gushed from his nose and mouth.  The Bashkirs swallowed out a grave, 6 feet long, 3 feet wide and 3 feet deep, and buried him. And Tolstoy adds, “And that's all the land that Pakhom really needed.”

 So sometimes we pay too high a price for what we get or try to get and, therefore, our wants and desires should always be tempered with sound judgment. This caution is generally good to keep in mind; however, it is not usually needed with reference to the desire for education. Assuming a young man or a young woman possesses ability to gain from a college education and to perform the required scholastic work, it is difficult to find many cases where the cost, the effort, the sacrifice, the struggle for this education is not worthwhile.

 As an educational institution, Brigham Young University is unique among the various colleges of the land. In the first place, it is the largest church-related university in North America, if not in the Western World.  Mere size of the school, however, is not its most important distinguishing
feature.  B.Y.U.’s principal unique characteristic, even in comparison with other church-related colleges, is the school's close tie to the Church.  Our Church leaders have continued to take an active interest and participate in the control of the school and have generously backed up this interest with financial support.  B.Y.U.'s Board of Trustees is composed of the First Presidency and the Council of Twelve Apostles.

 If I had time I could trace the evolutionary development that ordinarily occurs in church-related institutions throughout the land, especially the ones connected with various Protestant faiths. First, they start out by being church supported and controlled, and gradually go on and on until they are independent. We are happy that that has not been the case at Brigham Young University.  Our strength, we believe, is that Brigham Young University has stayed close to the Church, and the Church has continued to support us generously and to give the necessary guidance, which we should have.

 Dr. Earl J. McGrath, former United States Commissioner of Education and now an Executive Officer of Columbia University, recently stated:

 “The church-related colleges have particular and worthy functions to perform in American society.  Under proper circumstances they can be preserved as essential elements in our complex system of higher education with their own special mission. They unconsciously have imitated or deliberately competed with their secular, and usually more richly endowed, sister institutions. Even now, some are misled by the undiscriminating emphasis on an excellence defined solely in terms of intellectual achievement--achievement increasingly, measured by the acquisition of knowledge. In the face of the present trends in education, it will be difficult for the church-related college to keep a clear vision of its special mission of providing a higher education within the context of the Christian faith.

Yet, among our people generally, there is an insistent yearning for an interpretation of life not inconsistent with modern learning but illuminated by a faith, which even the most learned require to guide them in the important realms of living. Whatever their other aspirations and activities, the dominant purpose of the church-related colleges must be to provide a place in which this faith can be nurtured and strengthened. Without this purpose, they inevitably will lose their vitality and ultimately disappear. With it, they can occupy an enhanced position in American higher education and immensely enrich our common life.”

 The sole justification for Brigham Young University as an institution supported by the Church (and it costs millions of dollars for buildings, maintenance, salaries and other expenses) is the providing of a college education in a religious environment--a place where students will be fed spiritually as well as in secular and temporal ways. It is believed that the maintenance of high academic standards with an insistence upon scholarly work is not incompatible with the teaching of religion. Robert Hutchins, while president of the University of Chicago, declared, “If a college or university is going to think about important things, then it must think about religion.”

 Often when young people go away to college for the first time, they are separated from the protecting influence of their home and family. They are exposed to new ideas in the sciences and the humanities, which may appear to be in conflict with the religious teachings, they had learned in childhood and in early adolescence.

 This is a critical period in their lives, as Brother Skousen pointed out yesterday. So it is especially important as they are exposed to higher education it be done in an environment where there can be reconciliation between the secular on the one side and the religious on the other.  We try to provide that at B.YU.  We try to see, in most cases anyway, in all cases if possible, that a student's testimony of the Gospel is stronger at graduation time than when he entered here as a freshman.

 On this campus, we attempt to teach principles of a well-balanced devotion and service to God and to our fellowmen as illustrated by the simple but dramatic life of Paul.  In the first century, there was a young man, Saul.  Brilliant, rich, the rising young star in the Jewish parliament; he was pegged as a leader for his people.  Then one day, on a trail between Damascus and Jerusalem, Jesus came to him in a blinding light.  As a consequence, Paul turned his back upon his career, became a persecuted, vagabond missionary, going up and down the countries of the
Mediterranean telling people of this Friend and Messiah.  The centuries have given their verdict. Nero was the great emperor at that time and Paul the penniless apostle.  But today, people name their dogs Nero, while millions of mothers have proudly named their sons Paul.

 In conclusion, may I quote an old proverb, which is apropos of what we have been discussing. Pay particular attention to it.  It goes like this:

 He who knows not, but knows that he knows not is humble, teach him;

 He who knows. but knows not that he knows is asleep, wake him;

 

He who knows not but knows not that he knows not is a fool, shun him; [I don't know that I would go that far, but maybe we could do something with him.] 

 

Finally,

 

He who knows and knows that he knows is a wise man, follow him.

 

May the blessing of our Father in heaven be with us all in our efforts to obtain more learning and to assist others, especially members of our individual families, to accomplish this goal, is my humble prayer, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.