Radiance, Respect, and Restraint

At an educational conference a few years ago, a speaker told of sitting in a bus on his way home from work and overhearing a conversation between two laborers who were in the seat in front of him. They were obviously elated at the thought of some overtime work that had been promised them, and they were hard at work in trying to figure out what next week’s paycheck would be. One man listed the hourly rate that they were being paid and—to the side—the number of hours of work that had been promised to them. At this point he turned to his companion and asked, a bit dubiously, if his friend knew how to multiply. After a moment’s hesitation, the friend took the paper and pencil, wrote the number of hours beneath the hourly rate, drew a line under both, and placed an “X” to the side. Then he waited expectantly; they both waited. Nothing happened. Finally, the one who had hoped to set the multiplication in motion by writing an “X” to the side of his problem crumpled the paper disgustedly and said to his companion: “That’s what’s wrong with multiplication; you’ve got to know the answer before you begin the problem.”

Begin at the Beginning

We smile sympathetically at such frustration because we share it whenever we fail to begin at the beginning. If we have not learned to add, the relative sophistication of multiplying will escape us. If we neglect faith—the first principle of the gospel—we simply cannot generate true repentance. Those we honor here today are persuasive evidence of what skilled and dedicated Latter-day Saints can do and be. If we would emulate them—their lives and their achievements—we must prepare ourselves to succeed.

We are told, poetically, that “the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”¹ As good poetry always should, this line suggests more than it seems to say. For while it bids us to appreciate the vision of youth, it also hints at a major limitation: youth’s willingness to be satisfied with a single dimension. “Long” thoughts may be profound, but they are often only tenuous. The breadth and depth that make an adult out of an adolescent, that unite vision with judgment, are earned—and learned. We encounter few substitutions and no shortcuts. Apprenticeship precedes mastery, and first steps may not be very sure.

All steps are really first steps if our vision matches our developing ability. We can find some comfort in taking tentative steps with others, and formal schooling provides the security of growing with our peers. In this sense, college should be both culmination and promise. We assemble as a community of faculty and students in a university setting, as the scriptures suggest, “to teach one another” (D&C 88:118).

In a truly dynamic learning situation, nothing escapes change. For the instructor, teaching can be a continuing intellectual implosion. The study material comes to fruition and the student is released from the bondage of ignorance and superstition. For the moment, however, let me concentrate on what can happen to students who are “anxiously engaged” (D&C 58:27) in their collegiate education. To begin with, attitude, far more than training, distinguishes the halfhearted pupil from the aspiring scholar.

Ordinary Student or Scholar?

Ordinary students find their relationship with faculty and administration both vague and awkward. Such students convert these relationships into symbols: the teacher becomes a grade, the administration a big stick. At the risk of sounding defensive, I believe that most teachers sincerely regret this situation and are eager to achieve at least an intellectual rapport with those whom they instruct. But here, the teachers’ authority works against them. Since they can command, their invitation is suspect. Yet even when students meet with their instructor or an administrative officer of their own volition, real communication rarely takes place. For every one student who comes to such an interview to learn, a hundred come to explain. Why? Because too many young people today believe the defensive assertions that attempt to justify student dereliction. They have been told so often that they are not responsible causes—they are only unfortunate results—that they believe it. After all, a result does not have a future, only a past. The establishment is to blame, or the Vietnam War, broken homes, poor teachers, or comic books. Such a list becomes a litany of extenuation.

In a rather moving poem, entitled “Talk,” John Holmes tells of his boyhood experiences with an old, deaf New England shipbuilder who provided him with some of the profoundest “talk” he ever heard—without speaking a word. As young Johnny watched the old craftsman’s skilled hands, he suddenly realized with the force of a voice shouting in his ear that no matter how you build it, your ship has to float: “you can’t explain to the ocean.” How many students have come to me to “explain to the ocean”? They tell me that their work will be late, that they have not been feeling well lately, or—a reflection of our mind-obsessed times—that they have always had a psychological block against spelling or grammar. The ultimate, or perhaps nadir, of all such “explanations” in my experience occurred when a student, a mite plaintively, excused his absence from my daily morning class by telling me that he needed to have his teeth fixed and that my class’s hour was the only “free period” he had.

How significantly different are the attitudes of the student-scholar! Student-scholars recognize in the administration not discipline so much as direction; they recognize their teacher not as an opponent but as a component in a dynamic process. The student turned scholar expects, nay insists, on being inspired by the instructor—and is not often disappointed. The material is always ready; the teacher is usually ready. But when the material, student, and teacher are ready, a fusion occurs, not the amalgamation that we often rather unctuously call education. In the real learning experience, the teachers are not outside or above or detached; they form an integral part of the reaction and are, themselves, never quite the same afterward. How easily students can settle for something less than scholarship on their own part and in so doing prevent the teacher from providing more than mechanical direction.

If we give our instructors grudging attention, we will turn them into police officers; if we fawn upon them, we tend to corrupt them. Even the least of us, however, can never completely escape the gnawing realization that dull students are invariably taught by dull teachers, and scholars are taught by scholars. We will never know how much steel resides in our instructor’s mind unless our own minds are file hard!

Three R’s for Our Day

Now, may I shift for a moment to those in the audience who are teachers. Our forebears fought for the three R’s of elementary education. May I today suggest an additional three that have distinguished the best teachers I have known and that seem particularly appropriate for our day. Almost reluctantly I have come to believe a statement that struck me as overstated when I first heard it. That statement was: “It is better to be loved than understood.” I am sure that this was meant to shock a little, perhaps even provoke that opposition out of which knowledge can come.

In retrospect, the people who have influenced me most were not those who provided me with the most information—although I remember them with gratitude (just as I remember some books with a feeling of obligation). Rather, those who influenced me most were those who helped me hear the key in which I was trying to compose the little tune that I would sing throughout my life. Those people gave me more than information. And over the years, I have tried to decide exactly what they did give me. I am now convinced that it was not so much what they gave—this varied—but that they all shared the memorable quality of radiance.

Radiance. Radiance is not merely enthusiasm; enthusiasm is only one of its manifestations. One of the basic meanings for radiance is “root,” for radiance is always more than surface sparkle. In a relative world, radiance rests on ultimates. As we grow in experience and through training, we realize more and more that all problems are finally theological ones, that the unproven premise precedes every rational conclusion. A formal religious commitment provides that premise for most of us. Radiance is also a philological cousin of our word twig—that oft-spoken metaphor of one person’s influence upon another. But radiance carries no connotation more meaningful than its suggestion of light.

A few years ago, a relatively uneducated contractor installing refineries in India enjoyed astounding success in training local residents to operate highly technical equipment. Because other contractors similarly engaged did not enjoy such success, he was asked to reveal the tests that he used to discriminate between those who could and could not be trained as technicians. Insisting that he really did not have a formal test, the contractor said that he would be happy to demonstrate his method of selection. At a central employment center, he simply asked job applicants to slowly file by him. From time to time, he pulled a man out of line. Finally, pointing to those whom he had chosen so informally, the contractor said, “I just look at the eyes. If they shine, that person can be taught anything. If they don’t, I can’t take a chance on him.”

Granting the questionable validity of such subjective evaluation, I yet submit that almost all the eyes shine in kindergarten and in Junior Sunday School. I am sure that many factors combine to dull those eyes, but lackluster teaching would not be far down the list. And for that reason, I insist that large classes and inadequate facilities compromise radiant teaching only slightly. In a telling description, Thoreau talks about what he means to be awake: “To be awake is to be alive. I have never met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?” Thoreau goes on to say that the highest of arts is to affect the quality of each day. Radiant people not only affect the quality of the day, they also change the direction of lives. I am not sure that radiance can be taught, but I believe that it can be evoked and nurtured. For that reason, no teaching function is so critical as inspiring students. Teachers will never inform as successfully as a library. They will always be overmatched at calculation by the computer. But in the blazing radiance of their own conviction, they can kindle fires that will warm and light generations.

Respect. My second R is respect—a word with an old-fashioned ring. Yet in order to achieve wholeness, love beyond infatuation or indulgence must add respect to affection. I cringe a little when I hear that particular teachers have established themselves as “pals” to their students. The fact that teachers themselves—not students—usually make such statements is revealing. The generation gap may be receiving faddish attention today, but it can be real.

Respect creates a type of security countering some of the self-consciousness that deters needed growth. Unfortunately, phrases such as “demanding respect” emphasize only coercion. True respect is never demanded successfully. We can force conformity, but obedience is always given. Of course, I am not implying that conformity is wholly negative. In most situations, for example, the Old Testament ideal of conformity to law must precede the New Testament doctrine of obedience to love. Awareness of this fact may keep the beginning teacher from pleading for cooperation with unruly students who translate their guilt into dislike for the teacher who indulges them.

Fairness is the ethic of the young. Youngsters do not have the thoughtless adult’s reverence for consistency. If the phrasing is beyond them, all children get the point of Emerson’s dictum that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” The explanation of many teachers, “If I did it for you, I would have to do it for everyone,” strikes most youngsters as being ridiculous, which it is. Such a statement is neat, and it has the aura of fairness, but no child is fooled. The teacher is simply saying, “I don’t have enough respect for you to hear your story or to evaluate the special circumstances you would like to plead.” No two cases are the same; rarely are they more than superficially similar. The student instinctively knows this and resents being lumped with others to suit a teacher’s convenience. Teachers cannot justifiably explain that the size of the class precludes their taking time to hear a student out. To retain a student’s respect, teachers must make decisions in the light of fact rather than expedient similarity. If a teacher takes any other attitude, the student feels driven to fall back on the tactic used so successfully at home—whining. If you think that listening to a student’s reasoned plea takes time, try cutting off a whiner.

Perhaps one of our difficulties is that we lack respect for our own ignorance. Possibly the creeping security of advanced degrees blunts the sensitivity that keeps us aware of what we really do not know. I suspect that I am as guilty as the next person here, but I would like to cite as an example our willingness to measure students. We comment upon dramatic cases of misjudgment disapprovingly, and educational journals grow shrill in defending individual differences. Only rarely, however, do we encounter teachers who have such respect for human potential and such an awareness of their own limitations that they remain flexible and alert to budding abilities and groping sensitivities.

Restraint. The final R is restraint. To action-oriented contemporaries, impatient with any system and heady with success as a result of direct involvement, restraint is almost synonymous with cowardice or a lack of integrity. I believe I have a special competence to speak about restraint because of my own undergraduate experience. I refer to my experience at Reed College when student protests became a commonplace.

While I was not really a participant in Reed’s changes, I was part of a militant student body negotiated in strength with the administration. We also defied local and federal authorities in a massive demonstration against the draft, war, and any restriction upon personal life. Most of the students involved were very bright, overwhelmingly articulate, and determined to change the world now. As I read the papers today, I often have the eerie sensation of living my youth again. The very slogans are the same—and those intense, imploring faces.

I do not remember my Reed years in disgust; rather, I remember them in sorrow. They were far from useless—the intellectual challenge was immense—but they were not years of controlled growth. Students throbbed when they should have meditated. They marched when they might have examined. They learned to live by symbols—and, although they would have denied it then, the simpler the symbol the better. They were skillful scorners and rabid partisans. Their adrenaline ran all the time. Whatever else they were, they were not apathetic. The teachers they usually followed were graying copies of the students they aroused. However, not all the teachers were like that.

The teachers who are now unforgettable, whose features do not blur into the mass and whose words still tingle, never took the easy, emotional way of mob power. They tried to help me see that uncontrolled effort is essentially wasted. Uncontrolled effort may seem to solve immediate problems, but, in fact, such effort creates antagonisms and solidifies stances until only surface agreements are possible. Alexander the Great took the activist’s part in solving the riddle of the Gordian knot when he contemptuously cut it, but we need to remember that he ruined the rope. Now, I would not be misunderstood. Restraint is not retreat. Justified complaints must be heard, and problems are not solved by ignoring them. If, however, we convert our relations with those we attempt to instruct into adversary proceedings, we license their rebellion.

Education is always a matter of discrimination, a skillful selection of alternatives. Significant innovation may begin in intuition, but intuition must be established in order. No one ever learned order by fomenting disorder. Teachers’ self-discipline sets the behavioral tone of their classes. Teachers who lose their temper turn respect for authority into a struggle for power.

Yet the most profound results of teachers’ restraint lie not in keeping control or advancing order. Rather, the teacher who embodies and teaches restraint can also inculcate taste—an attribute fast disappearing under the aggressively gross onslaught of mass entertainment. An ancient proverb warns us that tastes are not to be disputed, but we have almost made this point irrelevant in our capitulation to the tasteless. Yet taste is only an expanded term for the sensitivity that makes civilization possible. Laws cannot be detailed enough to settle every dispute. Technology cannot surround us with riches so great that all will have enough. Only taste can help us recognize the unspoken yearning of another’s dreams—and lead us to call decent that which builds community and makes love more than lust. A teacher at BYU might well help a student develop what James Russell Lowell has called “that good taste which is the conscience of the mind, and that conscience which is the good taste of the soul.”

A Teacher’s Responsibility

A teacher, by training and by opportunity, must help young people place their knowledge in a moral and social context that cannot always be spelled out. But the restraint that helps students function as truly human beings, capable of developing interaction with peers and a willingness to earn their part in society, must be taught as well. Teachers have the enviable responsibility of bringing about this very goal. They can help reveal gradually, but irresistibly, the exciting world that is the province of cultured knowledge. Not all such opportunities are restricted to the classroom. I remember a brief exchange during World War II with a welder on my crew in a shipyard. As our graveyard shift was coming to an end, the dawn broke in a soft, flush lush over the water; I quoted some lines from Homer. My unlettered friend found Homer’s phrase “rosy-fingered dawn” interesting but inadequate. Yet it stirred him to his own fresh but somewhat awkward description of the coming day. As we punched out, he casually inquired, “What was the name of that fellow who talked about the dawn’s hands?” Homer may not have gained an immediate admirer, but something besides the sun was dawning that morning.

I also remember the young cowboy from Montana who came to BYU some years ago. I was a new teacher at BYU, and he was in my freshman English class. His lack of preparation for the class was almost outrageously obvious. He had very little concept of coherence and no skill at all in developing an idea. We suffered together. One day, after class, he handed me a much-folded piece of paper and confessed that it was a poem he had written. The thought of this boy subjecting himself to the discipline of poetry was almost beyond belief, but I assured him that I would like to read his poem and that I would be happy to talk with him about it. I am afraid that the opening lines were about what I had expected. And yet, on down the page, as he tried to tell me what it was like to be in a summer thunderstorm on the ranch where he worked, suddenly came a line of unmistakable poetry. He talked about thunder “rumbling, bumbling, grumbling like a God in disgrace.” I envied that line, and I quickly realized that this boy perhaps only lacked preparation and that I—who manifestly was not a poet—might yet teach one.

My experience with that boy reminded me of why I came to BYU in the first place. I love BYU for what it has stood for, for what it now stands for, and for what it is destined to be. Together, we can become genuine scholars under the firm but gentle tutelage of the three R’s: radiance, respect, and restraint. This is my prayer, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.