BYU’s Mission to Serve Individuals and Families

In reflecting upon the theme of this conference—educational innovations at BYU—one is tempted to outline, list, and explain. The real difficulty with such an approach, however, is that a list is more appropriately read during one’s leisure, while outlines can become downright soporific. Rather than listing or outlining, what we really need to do today is think together about BYU. For my part, I will try to present a little bit of what we have been and what we hope to become. If we understand how we have arrived where we are, we should have a base for understanding what we hope to do. What we now are is made dynamic by a fresh view of the past and an imaginative forecast of the future.

As Paul announces his mission to the Romans, he acknowledges what he owes to those who have prepared him, concluding with the frank disclosure that he has been “debtor . . . both to the wise, and to the unwise” (Rom. 1:14). Perhaps we need to be equally candid in assessing what BYU’s first century has meant to it academically, for the challenge of a second one-hundred years must root itself in where we are now and how we got here. Concerning how we got here, let us acknowledge some of our debts to the wise, especially to those who set attitudes by which we still live and thrive. From the beginning, this institution has had a sense of perspective. Administrative and academic challenges that might well have left unhealing wounds resulted instead in saber scars that make only a slightly boisterous youth. Even repeated athletic defeat has not muted the spirit of BYU, which, finally, may provide the “substance of things hoped for” (Heb. 11:1). That spirit is the very essence of faith.

We can understand the careful thought that goes into any new program at BYU when we understand the lean years this university has experienced. Yet when the academic soup had to be watered slightly in order to go around, the watering was done at the old Academy and in the early days of BYU with a flourish that made necessity appear to be choice. I hope the relative affluence of our present day does not tempt us to fret for that which we have yet to obtain. We have always displayed a pioneering ingenuity in using resources totally—but have blessedly escaped the dourness that often accompanies required thrift. I salute those who have preceded us and who have let us see that a threadbare coat can be worn with style but that a poor mouth reveals a poverty of spirit that cannot refrain from discounting its blessings.

From its beginning, BYU has not depended on heavy outside financing to undergird innovative effort. The Honors Program, the new General Education approach, or the innovative ways in which we have tried to involve our students in independent learning situations have been a direct cost to us. When we spend our own money for something new, we are not inclined to be either casual or whimsical. The burden of proof is on that which is innovative. It must be more than novel: it must be better.

One of the great resources at BYU, which we never underestimate, is not only the expertise but the attitude of those who teach here. Many are with us at great sacrifice, which is clearly in the tradition of BYU’s early teachers who “did without” in extraordinary grace. Our faculty today have opportunities their predecessors did not share, but we still expect from them a kind of dedication based on something more than a gold standard.

Concerning attitude, I recently had lunch with a representative of the Carnegie Foundation, and she could not get over the fact that our students seemed so alive and yet so well behaved. In trying to be fair, I disclaimed any major credit for their attitudes, pointing out that almost a third of our students were returned missionaries and that most of them had been raised in homes in which good behavior was expected and promoted by example. She readily acknowledged this but added, “Don’t underestimate the availability of your faculty and administration. I know most of the major universities in the country rather well, and I don’t know one in which the faculty takes such an interest in students.” May I add my personal testimony to this. Research that would guarantee academic recognition must often be foregone by a faculty member to listen patiently, tenderly to a distraught student whose problems are less academic than personal, but whose distress is very real. Time spent in this manner does not show upon a faculty load report, but its cost to the faculty is a continuing and heavy one. Students are not turned away from faculty and administrative offices at BYU, and they never will be. Yet few students—and even fewer parents—realize how much time faculty members are asked to give that is not directly connected with their teaching. Suffice it to say that faculty members usually give their time graciously in a spirit of concern worthy of those who have taught and now teach at the BYU.

As this university has moved into the mainstream of higher education—and become a magnet for students from throughout the world—we are unabashed in proclaiming the strength of Church-related education. In contrast, many schools with a religious foundation have purchased academic development at the cost of religious commitment. As these schools have become more complex and tried to serve a wider constituency, they have struggled to keep a specific theological orientation. The subtle heresy of accommodation and the blandishments of homogeneity have taken their toll. But I believe that Church-related education must not abdicate its special insight into what is basic in humans’ potential understanding and self-control, for I am convinced that all questions are finally theological ones and that the goal of education is simply understanding the implication of one’s beliefs.

When Plato long ago insisted that the true, the good, and the beautiful are all one, he was not trying to blur distinctions or to support the easy thought that if we concentrate on any one of the three we will automatically have the other two. What he did hope to do was raise our sights, help us see that the partial life—no matter how intensely it is lived—is never really satisfactory. Church-related education has a special opportunity to serve the whole person, for the fact that whole and holy come from the same root is no coincidence. We have difficulty talking about “whole” men and women in groups. After all, we have all been warned that we should avoid comparing apples with oranges. But are we sufficiently aware of how presumptuous we are to compare apples with apples—if the apples are individual human beings? Wholeness suggests a highly personal quality that refuses to be compromised by numbers, classification, or statistics. The salary slot known as a “full-time equivalent” or FTE—a Frankenstein creation—may keep many public institutions from responding as sensitively as they might to particular needs. Church-sponsored schools, on the other hand, will never find fulfillment in pursuing the ninety and nine; their role is to find—and save—the one. If this role seems strange for one of the larger universities in the country, we still assert our realistic commitment to it.

As soon as we start thinking about students in groups, we have demeaned them. In this vein, I recall a gifted teacher who, near the end of his career, told me that he had taken too long to learn to count up to one, to realize that all other numbers were fractions. Like the eminent schoolmaster Mr. M’Choakumchild, of Dickens’s Hard Times, we are too easily enthralled by our ability to go beyond one; we play with numbers as though they were not lives. Remember Sissy Jupe, Mr. M’Choakumchild’s student in that famous novel? How upset she was when she could not do the sums demanded of her in recitation! To the request that she give the percentage of those who starved in London’s streets if out of one million, twenty-five are found dead from hunger each year, she replied that to each one who died, the answer was 100 percent, while to each one who lived, it was zero.¹

Such a stunning answer, of course, may reflect an obsessive concern for self. But at the deepest, human level, especially appropriate for Church-related education, we know that speaking of individuals in the aggregate does reduce them. All numbers other than one are fractions. Perhaps the distinction we need here is provided in the etymology of the words idiocy and integrity. Both carry basic meanings of oneness, but idiocy suggests that which is partial or peculiar, while integrity connotes wholeness. And in individual wholeness one always finds the promise of meaningful community.

At BYU, we believe that community begins in the home. In a truly remarkable article published in Harper’s magazine, Michael Novak describes the role of the family in contemporary society. Specifically, he insists upon the political significance of families in American life. He does so by suggesting that the way both conservatives and liberals define issues—“the state” vs. “the individual”—is just a simple polarization. Liberals are uneasy with the concept of family because it seems to hinder state planning, while conservatives are uneasy about the constraints a family provides for individuals.²

Novak insists that for a thousand years, the family has been the one institution that has been the political, economic, and educational strength of most cultures throughout the world. He supports this generalization with persuasive, individual citations, and he further suggests that a commitment to family will be the only bridge that can possibly unite whites and blacks and working-class people of all nationalities and races. Without naming communistic attempts to de-emphasize family life, he presents overwhelming evidence to show that we can have little sense of community if we have little sense of family.

I need not rehearse the remainder of Novak’s article to make my point. No university, to my knowledge, has stressed the family as the basic academic unit in society, and we at BYU have not completely accepted the leadership role that might legitimately be expected of us here. This problem is not simply a matter to which our family scholars might turn their attention. If we consider the family as a fundamental learning resource, we need to help the potential fathers and mothers who come under our tutelage understand the extraordinary opportunity that may be theirs. I would hope, for example, that young students struggling to master Physics 100 do so in the realization that those struggles will help them explain high-school physics to their own children some day. One may be taught to read in school, but one learns to love to read in the home. If we would counter the grossness of most television programming, our own conversation will need to be a stimulating and attractive alternative. Most of us desperately need help here, and I hope that BYU finds approaches that will unite families in an academic enterprise that undergirds Family Home Evening, adds an exciting dimension to dinner table conversation, or simply combines individual experience and expertise into family competence. I look for the day when BYU can provide the imaginative leadership that will help re-enthrone the family at the center of the educational enterprise.

We cannot realize this leadership role if we continue to stress individual accomplishment and merely hope that parts will coalesce into oneness by some convenient gravitation. After all, a superficial concern for individuality can become devastatingly divisive. If each person is a beloved child of God and an equally beloved component in the family, we cannot discharge our educational responsibility by simply certifying individuals’ competitive position in comparison with their fellows. At the same time, however, we need to avoid an either/or trap here. Our choice is not whether to grade individual accomplishment, for we need grading of some kind if we are to have gauges for improvement. But we have long been willing either to define accomplishment narrowly or ride a pendulum into the willowy realm of “life adjustment,” where all footing is unsubstantial and what appears to be comforting concern turns out to be cruel indulgence. We must care enough to “find the one” but not be content to simply identify the one. Why? Because simple identification usually succeeds only in categorization, in placing the one within a group. When I use terms such as “bright,” “dull,” “underachiever,” or “rebel,” for instance, I am thinking in archetypes, which may be convenient but are always unfair.

How hard it is to consider a single, whole person. Some systems have been more successful than others—the public schools of Britain have come closer than most—but the usual institution of higher education has sown indifference and reaped disillusionment and contempt. BYU must show the way by establishing programs in which all individuals succeed. How quickly such a goal forces us either to think freshly or to betray our refusal to consider an approach beyond what we have been using with dubious success for years.

The trouble with most current educational philosophies is that they assume failure. Consider a grading curve wherein 80 percent of students receiving credit cannot be certified as having demonstrated mastery. That curve calls into legitimate question our entire educational enterprise. What is such credit? What does it mean to graduate with a C average? Rather than having students simply stumble through, as the C average suggests, BYU’s General Education program reflects an effort to give each student a sense of mastery in basic areas and a feeling of security in areas of fundamental knowledge—that which might legitimately be expected of a college-trained person. If the compliment we are paying our students is a bit knee-buckling, it is nevertheless real, and we intend to help them achieve a level of competence we can truly certify. That is, we are absolutely determined that no student will again leave BYU without having some general competence as well as a specific major. Furthermore, if we really mean it when we talk about the family as the basic educational unit in society, we will have to commit ourselves to a lifelong learning process beyond brochure rhetoric for extension programs.

All of us should be aware of the statistics indicating that most young people will change employment several times within their working careers. The vanity of thinking that any particular preparation will be adequate should not have to be underscored. Already, traditional labels such as “liberal arts,” “pre-professional,” or “vocational” are blurred by the exotic demands of modern technology, and the future promises an even more incredible array. Specific preparation may be beyond our vision of what is needed, but a young man or woman who has had a special strength recognized and honed, who has been patiently and skillfully rescued from the clinging fears of personal ignorance and awkwardness, who has been nurtured socially and inspired spiritually, will not only face the unknown without trepidation, but will enjoy a creative confidence that solves problems instead of merely responding to them. Hopefully, such liberated men and women will not have to be preoccupied with rehabilitation or repentance, the twin legacies of paradise lost.

A few years ago, when I returned to the small city in which I had spent my childhood, I was both thrilled and dismayed. Houses encrusted the suburban hills in which we used to run, and the dead-end streets that had been our playgrounds were now ruthlessly cut through to handle the activities of new and sophisticated industry.

As I reflected upon these changes, I was comforted by the thought that the current inhabitants of my hometown enjoyed opportunities not dreamed of a generation earlier. But the small boy in me—the boy who loved the open fields now thick with buildings, who remembered the intimacy of shared poverty—was not wholly satisfied with what he now saw and felt, for if the town had paid for economic development by losing sensitivity to its sense of community, the cost was really too high. Apparent prosperity may mask a degrading lumping-together of human beings. If the lovely natural environment—now totally modified—had been more defaced than enhanced by what had taken place in the name of progress, the town had suffered irreparable loss.

As BYU faces its current challenges, I worry about what we are giving the many young people who now come to us in exchange for the intimacy that their predecessors on this campus shared. I find something wonderfully exciting about learning together. Yet I am deeply grateful that we no longer have to simply “make do” and try to discount the sophisticated demands that business and industry are making upon our graduates. Our size and complexity make possible the finest facilities and the most specialized teaching. Somehow, however, we need always to remember that efficiency can be purchased at the cost of humanity. I even worry a little when we insist that a young person choose a major quickly. An early choice will undoubtedly facilitate the most efficient scheduling of course sequence. Yet if I achieve this efficiency by cornering students into expressing their “interests” or by impaling them on aptitude tests, I may be serving them badly.

My own youth illustrates the value of not choosing a specific field immediately. As the first generation in my family out of the coal mines, I early displayed both an interest in and an aptitude for digging coal. Fortunately, I had people in my life who did not insist that I choose too quickly. And, while I ultimately did not pursue a trade, I did know the deep satisfaction of working with my hands in skilled occupations—I still hold a journeyman’s card in the welder’s union—and I put myself through college as a cabinetmaker. This experience taught me something that has been verified by research but is not often acknowledged: those who are careless in biology class cut their fingers in shop. Yet most of us, at least implicitly, feel that vocational courses are the “answer” for those who are either incapable of or unexcited by the abstractions of college. On the contrary, I am convinced that anyone who becomes a machinist, an expert in numerical control, has nothing to fear from college algebra.

If I were to speculate with you about the nature of higher education at BYU in the next few years, I would suggest that the traditional identification of young people as being freshmen, sophomores, juniors, or seniors will simply fade away. Some students will be moving through college very rapidly, demonstrating competency and doing much on their own. Others will be proceeding at a much slower pace—making up for past deficiencies and acquiring knowledge on the level at which they can absorb it most effectively. Incidentally, I know of no real evidence to support the idea that those who learn quickly learn best. Some current tests of so-called “intelligence” emphasize perceptual quickness, but such tests simply illustrate the common tendency to devise tests supporting that which we already believe. If we define intelligence in certain ways, our tests can be made wonderfully supportive. I still feel a bit blue when I recall a test for creativity I once took. Given a short synopsis, I was asked to supply several possible titles. The material given was reasonably provocative, but the substantial space left on the paper indicated that I was expected to come up with many different titles. I realized, sadly, that my ability to generate a number of titles would be equated with my creative quotient. A single, superbly sensitive and evocative title alone would be given no more weight than any other on my list. Only if one is content to define creativity in woefully restrictive terms can such a test be useful at all. Surely creativity is more than quantitative eccentricity.

If we truly hope to help our students, creativity or intelligence tests are not the answer. Instead, what we really need to know is what inspires a student. Unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately—generalizing about how to inspire students is difficult. What I do know is that the individual teacher seems to be a key element. With what warmth and gratitude I remember a few teachers who helped me generate enthusiasm and were secure enough to recognize that such enthusiasm is a better promise of educational development than any information alone could ever be. If teaching is inspiring, student enthusiasm is inevitable. At BYU we are working very hard to see if we cannot improve our teaching. I have always been distressed to remember a comment I heard from a president of Harvard (who shall remain nameless). He said that the one thing he demanded of his teachers was that they make each class hard. My response is that the easiest way in the world to make a class hard is to teach it badly. How much better for Harvard if its president had suggested that each class be inspiring! When I recall how successful the late Tommy Martin was in inspiring students through an introduction to bacteriology on this campus, I am convinced that inspiration is possible in every area.

In an effort to help faculty provide inspiring classes, we have gone beyond student evaluations of courses and teachers. For instance, we have invited consultants here to help with teacher development. In one impressive seminar, the consultant helped professors see their classes as truly cooperative efforts in which the teacher played a major role yet avoided creating adversarial relationships. When I attended the final session of one seminar, I had to shake my head a bit wryly when I saw those who had been in the seminar and who were going to report. They came from very diverse disciplines, and each was a particularly strong-minded teacher. They had not been at all averse to telling administrators how the university needed to be run, and I could simply imagine how they had worked the consultant over as he talked with them about their own teaching. As each reported, however, I felt a mounting excitement. Something very profound had happened to every single participant. Apparently, each had learned how to work with students in ways that none had tried before. I will never forget the physics professor who said, in a voice choked with emotion, that he had learned something about testing that had taken him twenty years to find out. Specifically, as part of the seminar, he had asked selected students to help write an examination. Those students helped him weed out ambiguities that, in times past, he had simply defended after the test had been given. As he and the small group of students he was using discussed possible questions, he found himself seeing the material through their eyes, and he was able to keep a perspective he had long ago lost in repeatedly teaching the material.

Nothing we are doing at BYU currently is more exciting to me than teacher development. We intend to keep undergraduate teaching under constant review. We are going to reward those who teach superbly, and we are going to help those who need some basic re-education in teaching effectiveness. My guess is that we may lose a few teachers, but the stakes are so high and the possibility so exciting that I would put teacher development near the top of the approaches that can make a significant difference for the entire institution.

As one might guess, some of the things we are trying to do here are not very popular with either teachers or students. Our new General Education approach seems to be a rather general threat. Specifically, our emphasis upon skilled undergraduate teaching is a challenge that many are reluctant to face. Our system of stewardship interviews in which we discuss, quite candidly, a teacher’s or administrator’s effectiveness are probably not going to win those of us who are instituting them any popularity contests. While other universities may follow our example, we are not counting on it. If our position seems to be turning us from the mainstream, however, we are quite prepared to dig a new channel. Real innovation is rarely accepted quickly. But we are committed to seeing that the Church does not spend the millions of dollars required to operate this university in the vain hope that it can make a difference.

To conclude my thoughts about BYU’s mission, may I lift a brief experience from my own youth to speak for us all. On the evening of the day on which Pearl Harbor was attacked, I sat by a radio in the town in which I had spent most of my youth on the coast of southern Oregon. It was the only deep-water port between San Francisco and Portland, and its harbor was well-known to hundreds of Japanese seamen who had loaded lumber at its docks. We sat in darkness and heard our local radio station report that a Japanese cruiser had been seen steaming north from Eureka, a little city on the northern California coast. In a thousand homes the same thought occurred: we were liable to be under attack before morning. Suddenly Pearl Harbor seemed very near, the war no longer a distant abstraction. The radio announcer, trying to keep his voice calm, suggested that the local sporting goods store open and distribute what ammunition it had. I pulled out my hunting rifle—which had never been fired in anger—and then set it down again, remembering the size of the guns on the Japanese cruisers that had often visited us. Through the night, I reflected that I was not disposed for battle, but I knew there was no place in the world that I would have rather been that night than sitting in that room in that city at that time. Whatever was to come would find me willingly in the vanguard.

At BYU, we believe deeply in the potential success of every student who comes to us. We are equally committed to seeing that none settles too quickly for that which is less than he or she could be. If some others do not always understand what we are trying to do, we are deeply comforted by the fact that most of the faculty have been our strong supporters. Faculty members have understood our anxiety to be more than a place where an education could take place. They have supported our determination to be the school where the best-prepared students would find needed honing and those who arrived in deprivation would leave in confident accomplishment. Few groups are as capable as the faculty will be in helping us see what we must yet do to meet that expectation and vision.