May 1968
MESSAGE TO GRADUATE SCHOOL CONVOCATION
By Earl C. Crockett
Dean Lloyd, President Wilkinson, Members of the
Administrative and Graduate Councils, Faculty, Friends and above
all Graduates:
This is a privilege indeed, for me to
be given an opportunity to speak to yu briefly this afternoon.
You recipients of graduate degrees,
300 of you at the masters and 22 at the doctoral levels have demonstrated
academic excellence and progressed sufficiently among educational
circles so that you deserve whole-hearted and enthusiastic congratulations.
You now belong to a minority group but
a highly respected and envied group.
The extent of your minority position is indicated by the
fact that today out of your general age group in the United States
only 4 persons out of each hundred have obtained or probably ever
will obtain a masters degree and only 1 person out of each 500 has
obtained or probably ever will obtain a doctorate. The percentages, however, are increasing. As a matter of fact, graduate enrollments since
1900 have been doubling each decade and this trend is likely to
continue. Even so, the demand for holders of graduate
degrees--masters and doctorates is increasing much faster than the
supply.
I have great respect for you graduate engineers
and physical scientists. Just
think of the loss to society if we were to lose the advantages coming
from your professions. You build for us our beautiful and utilitarian
bridges, our remarkable freeways, our near-human electronic computers,
our astounding instruments of transportation and communication.
Likewise you graduate biological and agricultural
scientists are to be highly respected.
Your assistance to mankind is immeasurable, your contributions
numerous. Consider for a moment your outstanding help
in providing for a greater supply and variety of food and fiber,
the control of disease as well as general assistance in medical
sciences.
Today, especially, trained people in the Humanities,
Fine Arts, Social Sciences, and Business are very much needed. Our
big problems ahead lie in these fields.
Human relationships, because of lack of confidence in each
other, poor communications, jealousies and selfishness among individuals
and nations are ever present. Thus
we salute you graduates in these fields as well as all the others. You have both challenges and opportunities for service to our fellowmen.
One of the demands in all the fields comes from
the teaching profession. It
is estimated that within the next five years we shall need in this
country 150,000 new high school teachers, 40, 000 new junior college
teachers, and 60,000 more university faculty members.
I trust that many of you plan on going into, or,
if you are already teaching, continuing in this noble profession. I am convinced there is no higher calling than
that of being a teacher.
May I be somewhat unorthodox and informal for a
moment by asking you graduates a half dozen questions, which you
may answer by a show of hands?
Some will undoubtedly answer in the affirmative more than
once.
My first question:
- How
many have had some experience in the past as an elementary, high
school or college teacher?
- How
many now have or else are planning on obtaining a teaching job
either immediately or ultimately?
- How
many have had experience as a teacher in a priesthood or church
auxiliary class?
- How
many have had experience as a teacher in missionary work in the
form of tracting, talking with investigators or holding cottage
meetings?
- How
many expect or hope to have the opportunity of teaching your own
children in your own home sometime?
- Is
there anyone who has not raised his or her hand at least once?
If you will allow me to be personal for a moment,
I'll explain why I am returning to the classroom after being in
full time administration for eleven years.
It is because I love teaching and want to return to it for
a few years before retirement.
I hope that I have not postponed the transition so long that
I cannot get up-to-date again in my field.
Some of us regret the fact that administrative jobs are considered
promotions above teaching positions. Because of this, too many excellent teachers
are attracted away from the field where they are needed so much.
It has been said that:
- When
planning for a day we tie our shoe,
- When
planning for a season we may plant corn,
- When
planning for a decade or even a century we perhaps plant a tree,
- But
when planning for eternity we educate a boy or girl.
What a challenge to all of us as teachers!
It is encouraging that teachers in elementary,
secondary and higher education are now being recognized salary-wise
in a comparatively satisfactory manner.
No longer is it generally necessary for public school
teachers and university faculty members to pinch pennies, to search
for better paying jobs during the summer, to moonlight after school
hours, or to mooch or borrow from more affluent relatives.
My first teaching job in an elementary school during
the early 1920's paid me $1200 for the year and I felt fortunate. Many of my colleagues were receiving as little
as $900 or $1000 per year salary.
With determination and considerable encouragement and assistance
from my wonderful bride (we were married when I was a junior in
college, and she is now seated in the audience and as young in spirit
as ever) with assistance from her I went on for higher degrees,
partly in order to earn enough money to support a family.
Eventually, the doctoral degree was obtained from the University
of California in 1931, but by then the great depression was beginning
and I took a job as Assistant Professor of Economics at a state
university for $2,200, which was reduced to $1,500 three years later as the depression
deepened.
Today the economic lot of teachers, at all levels
is very different. If you
select teaching in most situations, although you perhaps will not
get wealthy, you can live comfortably.
You can enjoy fine associations, you will have some vacation
time and opportunities for travel, but above all, you will have
the satisfaction of teaching young people and sometimes older ones,
helping to prepare them not only for this life but also for eternity.
Moreover, in the process, you the teacher, will
probably learn more than the students whom you instruct.
While on this subject, may I say a word or two
about academic freedom? Teachers
in the classroom must be free to speak the truth, free to discover
and accept new truth and also they must be free to hang onto and
preserve old truths which may be in the process of becoming old-fashioned.
In other words, there must be freedom for the presentation
of facts as they are.
Of course, with our insistence upon academic freedom,
we must equally resist academic license – for there is a difference
between freedom and license. This
is a responsibility that may well bring an earnest teacher to his
knees in humility and in supplication that he will not implant in
the heart or in the mind of others, by statement or suggestion,
anything that is not true. The theories and opinions of men change much
and often. We must vigilantly
preserve freedom to teach truth, and we must equally guard against
letting our freedom promote personal prejudices and misinformation
at the expense of sound education.
My dwelling upon the subject of teaching and education
is not intended to imply that other professions are not important. Some of you may be taking positions in industry,
in business or with governmental agencies or you may obtain work
in various other capacities. But
again allow me to remind you that in all occupations and professions
there is at least some teaching to be done, and particularly there
is need for teaching in the home and in the church.
Regardless of what you do, if it’s legal and honorable,
you can make outstanding contributions to society – you can
well represent your family, your church, and Brigham Young University,
your alma mater.
We now say farewell but only in the sense that
we wish you may fare well. We
urge you to remember that you are now alumni of our beloved school
still part of us.
May the Lord bless you and all of us in the name
of Jesus Christ, Amen.