A House of Learning

In my Father’s house are many mansions . . . (John 14:2)

If I am an indifferent marksman, and if I have never really sighted in my gun, I probably should not be deluded by a total score that includes an accidental bulls-eye. Yet the psychological lift of one perfect shot—no matter its questionable source—is simply immense. Anyone who has bowled a bumbling strike, anyone who has watched an uncontrollably hooked golf ball follow a fairway dogleg, knows a thrill that has little to do with whether the thrill is merited.

Unfortunately, few such happy accidents occur in academic life. The joys of teaching are as deserved as its miseries, and even research offers no genuinely unearned breakthroughs. The Flemings and the Curies, in other words, have to be prepared to recognize the significance of a seemingly chance occurrence. Serendipity may be romantic possibility, but it is no substitute for informed insight. Scholars are often excited—but rarely astonished—by what they are doing. Scholarly satisfactions are not going to come from a lucky shot, a fortuitous circumstance. A scholar’s achievement is never haphazard, and neither is the setting within which scholars coax specific order from general education and marshal the resources with which to counter ignorance and sin.

Failure to include sin and ignorance as twin foes of academic maturity could be the most tragic misjudgment of modern education. Like the ill-fated defenders of Singapore, we may stand by guns that face only the sea and have little defense against an unanticipated attack from the jungle. In a profound sense, even ignorance can be subsumed under sin, for my ignorance is an offense against the divine potential I bring into the world.

We need not expand the definition of sin—or even give it sectarian reference—to make it immediately relevant to the problems we face. Consider, for instance, the classic seven: pride, covetousness, lust, envy, gluttony, anger, and sloth. Originally, these deadly sins were identified not because they were worse than others, but because they demonstrated the fecundity of one wrong attitude. If, for example, we are basically selfish, we may finally be guilty of every sin through which the thread of self-interest runs.

While age has not withered the vigor of selfishness, I would cite dishonesty as an equally widespread evil and one that is especially rampant in our time. Sadly, higher education has not escaped dishonesty’s pervasive contamination. Almost all of the problems compromising our acceptance of moral imperatives are allied to some form of dishonesty. At the grossest level, numerous students repudiate educational loans, yet many who are in default have convinced themselves that the government really owes them what they choose not to repay. Before we judge such rationalization harshly, we must acknowledge the persuasive force of example. We need not be guilty of crass improprieties to become a justification for attitudes and actions that go far beyond what we might expect. Any time we plaster over a crack in our own ethical foundations, we warrant the sledgehammer in our students’ hands. If they bang away at the base of a sacred edifice, we cannot disavow our participation.

I am grateful that BYU appears to be far less battered than most universities as we assess our moral vulnerability. But we are hardly impeccable—and impeccability must be our goal. During the past few weeks, administrators have received several disheartening letters from students who defend their own misconduct by citing faculty peccadilloes. As awry as the reasoning is in most of these letters, we often uncover the plastered crack, the cue that may have been misread or presumed upon, but which, nevertheless, was there to be exploited. One student demanded the return of his tuition, insisting that his professor’s repeated absences from class constituted a default on the implied contract between professor and student. Another complained that a significant amount of class time had been given over to hearing the instructor’s denunciation of the General Education program; this student too felt “ripped off.” A third student insisted that a teacher’s involvement in an outside business made the teacher unavailable for counseling. Other letters petitioned for grade changes in the light of examinations that the professor had developed for earlier classes but used in spite of the fact that they did not quite fit. If these seem to be minor matters—after all, the classes were covered; faculty members have a right to speak their minds regarding the curriculum; and the material tested in the last case was essentially similar to that handled in class—a slight edge of shame clings to all such extenuations. If we would send our students forth in impeccable probity, they cannot be asked to bear the burden of ambiguous moral examples on the part of teachers and administrators. We must acknowledge that those we instruct carry the impress of our moral imperfections as indelibly as the knowledge and skills we impart so faithfully. By the nature of our task as educators we are called upon to judge, and the seventh chapter of Moroni makes clear that judgment is never simply a secular business, nor is it appropriate at the hands of one whose own life would be a distorting instrument.

BYU’s house of learning can never really separate the sacred from the secular. If a teacher’s discipline does not lend itself to direct moral instruction, the teacher’s own example adds simultaneous teaching to precept, teaching that is inevitably involved in moral choice. What we are, in other words, may well shout so loudly that few will remember what we say. We must demonstrate that we know right from wrong. We must succeed in supplanting the darkness of ignorance and sin with the light of truth. We must all be able to say with Joshua of old, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Josh. 24:15).

If nothing turns a home into a mansion so truly as spiritual commitment, even temples must be appropriately furnished, and our university must not discount its role in helping us control and appreciate our environment. In many professions, circumstances provide a continuing evaluation of performance: cases won or lost in law; the quick and the dead in medicine; an innovative bridge or a broken dam in engineering. The results of academic endeavor are rarely so specific or arresting. The complex interplay of factors both in and out of professors’ control often denies them immediate recognition of accomplishment yet also insulates them from the consequences of failure. Most of us are at least vaguely comfortable under such an arrangement. If we can avoid the pointing finger, we will forego the pat on the head. The result may well be the settled scholar, the hackneyed preceptor who has not thought freshly about either the subject matter or teaching techniques since accepting that first continuing contract.

Introspection is often disconcerting and occasionally threatening, yet no outside force can be as directive as a truly irreverent conscience, one that is not impressed by the external trappings of academia but which remembers me as clearly as a frightened undergraduate as it now sees me with a gold tassel dangling from a mortarboard. Such an impudent conscience can still ask the questions we need to hear, can cajole us into working out a good examination question instead of settling for a windy second cousin to it.

When I was a teacher, I was fond of saying that my examinations were an integral part of the learning experience I hoped to provide for the students in my class. In retrospect I am sure this was so, but my tests may have created more cynics than scholars. What I should have heard earlier now echoes and chatters in my memory. I am embarrassed to recall that my difficult questions often focused on trivia and my easy ones on the obvious. My essay questions usually required arcane excursions or monumental abstracts. While I provided the counters with which to play the game, in other words, I did not always come up with a game worth playing. I was consistent, however, in demanding that students read my mind. Only now do I fully realize what a galling challenge that apparently was. My former students have never described one of my tests as marking a moment of mastery or an intellectual watershed for them. In truth, I have a hard time remembering what I asked, and if I check back far enough, I cannot think of the answers either. May I, out of penance for my own dereliction and in the hope that you can build now on what I learned a bit late, commend continuing introspection to you. Introspection should be a valued characteristic in a true house of learning.

Occasionally, as I engage in the litany of failure recited by students who have been suspended academically, I wonder why they did not find the mansion they expected to discover at BYU. If this is our Father’s house—and I deeply believe it is—a mansion should be available for all, a place reflecting the best each student brings plus everything that sensitive direction and rigorous development can add.

Whatever the student’s mistakes, every academic suspension represents a collective defeat, and we need to do more than explain or defend our role in a student’s lack of success. As I ponder my own response to students, I am struck by how rarely I begin by expecting all to succeed. I am immediately prepared to arrive at a competitive ranking, but I confess the inadequacies of my approach by my readiness to use terms such as “fast” or “slow” to describe students. To label certain students as “slow learners” is not to say as much about the rate at which they are capable of developing as it does about my attitude concerning their absolute potential. Implicit in most of our education measurement is the analogy of athletics, the race. Instead of challenging young people with the material they need to master, we match them against their peers. Of course, a word like “peers” cannot withstand analysis, but it has a comforting ring when one confronts distraught parents. Need I belabor my point by indicating that little evidence supports the belief that those who learn rapidly learn best? This whole problem of academic failure is compounded, of course, by our unsophisticated efforts to understand the learning process at all. National norms—which label without either mercy or persuasive justification—continue to bemuse us. How often do we identify arrant stupidity when what we are really seeing is simply a homesick, badly frightened youngster?

We speak easily of individual differences and special needs, but more often than not we end up lumping those with special needs into that very category: special needs. By doing so, we allow ourselves to bow toward the one while avoiding the need to undergo the onion breath of a truly individual problem. I still remember Ross Perot, who spoke in a forum assembly at BYU a few years ago. Nothing he said in his eloquent plea for our prisoners of war in North Vietnam nor in his offhand comments on how to become a billionaire in a ten-year span were as memorable as his introduction. Looking out a bit balefully at the assembled students, he said: “I’m tired of hearing you described as the brightest, best-educated, most idealistic generation that has been born. I take you characters one at a time.” Far from resenting this statement, the students were delighted. One of the things they have been trying to tell us is that they do not want to be thought of or spoken of in the aggregate.

When we learn to count to one, we are ready for fellowship, that tender concern that is as demanding as it is comforting. Fellowship adds one to one. We are already in a little trouble when we call that relationship “two,” for keeping more than one in focus is difficult. Yet once I have committed myself to the success of every individual, I can even think of individuals in convenient groupings, but the group never takes on the life that is the unique preserve of the single person. As I think about Joe or Nancy, I cease to be satisfied with grading and concentrate on developing competence. When I pay each student the compliment of expecting superb effort, we are both surprised to discover what deficiencies effort can span. Each student wants to please me, and I am determined to teach each one. I care so much that I do not come away from my relationship with a single student unscathed, but I am no longer a herder. Instead, I am every student’s mentor.

Without looking up, I can see the smiles on a few of your faces and hear the unspoken chiding. “Doesn’t Bob know how large my classes are?” “How do I teach 300 students individually?” If you have really phrased these questions in your mind as I have suggested, however, you have already identified part of the problem. Of course we cannot teach a large class individually, for we are thinking about students as a class and not as separate people. When we think freshly, as those who developed Physics 100 did a few years ago, we can always find ways to individualize instruction—even provide for a one-on-one experience with that screen figure who might otherwise seem a little larger than life. Consider also how effective certain teachers of freshman English have been in recording comments rather than writing them on student compositions. Not only is much more comment possible, but students need not feel they are bleeding to death as they survey the red ink detailing their deficiencies. The teacher’s voice can convey much more than any cryptic comment—including a warmth that keeps needed criticism from becoming destructive.

Fellowship with each student is easier if we have established such a relationship with colleagues—again, individually. Prospective faculty often ask me what is BYU’s most distinctive characteristic. I have no hesitancy in pointing out that professional jealousy—which is endemic on most university campuses—is not common here. Most of us can experience a vicarious thrill, unsmudged by resentment, at a colleague’s success. With Alma, we have learned to identify with each brother and sister, and in so doing, to prepare ourselves for the fullness that only the gospel makes possible. Such fullness is more than academic achievement, but scholarly triumphs are surely heightened by the eternal perspective that the revealed truth provides. As I have been trying to assemble a listing of faculty accomplishments during the past year, I have noted with delight how many imaginative efforts are being made. I am not particularly impressed by research that is simply a different tack, but I am pleased by efforts suggesting a commitment that is spiritually deep, introspection that keeps asking difficult questions, and an ability to cooperate that bespeaks both confidence and a willingness to share.

In the light of what I have just said about our ability to enjoy vicarious satisfaction from the triumphs of others, I invite you to rejoice with me in the significant scholarly contributions occurring throughout our campus. Those contributions include cross-disciplinary research, traditional research, and research employing undergraduates in substantial roles. Concerning BYU’s academic environment, I have interviewed scores of prospective faculty during the past few months who are quite candid in identifying BYU not only as a social and spiritual sanctuary, but as a scholarly haven as well. We are now receiving widespread recognition for our careful efforts to keep free from the outside controls bedeviling much creative effort elsewhere and our willingness to be quite flexible in calculating an individual’s contribution. We need to be worthy of the trust that our board, our students, and the general Church membership place in us. We must be able to hold our heads high in conventional academic circles; simultaneously, however, we must not lower our heads when we speak, persuasively, our unique contribution.

May I conclude by saying, once again, how deeply proud I am of you. I happily cite your accomplishments and general academic prowess to everyone I meet. If we continue to be worthy of the Lord’s direction, we can move in his strength toward that fruition of effort which bespeaks his direction. I pray we may have both mind and heart to be what the Lord needs at this time, in this place, and that our influence may be carried by those we teach and that which we do creatively to millennial generations. I ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.