The Fruit of Their Thoughts

Among Old Testament prophets, Jeremiah seems to have the hardest time understanding the Lord’s relationship to his covenant children. Again and again, Jeremiah’s “Ah, Lord God” precedes a question as to why and how. The result is often a divine explanation that is breathtakingly to the point. For instance, to Jeremiah’s query concerning how the wicked were to be destroyed, the Lord replies tersely that he will give them “the fruit of their thoughts” (Jer. 6:19). In other words, the Lord will simply allow the wicked to harvest what they have planted and tended so consistently. How nicely this idea echoes the suggestion in Proverbs that as a man “thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Prov. 23:7).

As we begin a new school year, I would like to share some reflections upon what we are preparing to harvest during the coming months. To begin bluntly, how are we better prepared this fall than we were last? To be specific, how clear are the assumptions, the shared perspectives, that must unite and focus our efforts? I routinely refer students to the teachers, department chairs, and deans they should have checked with before seeing me. I am sobered, however, by the nature of these students’ complaints. Many are almost identical to those heard at other large and complex institutions. I wish the complaints suggested more clearly that BYU is a unique university, one having prophets as trustees and a pervasive, inspiring concern for student growth and development.

Unfortunately, many of our programs gauge themselves by secular counterparts that make no pretense of putting teaching first. No wonder higher education encounters funding problems and has dropped in public esteem! Poor teaching is not acceptable at BYU. In fact, over the last several years, I have asked faculty members to accept the challenge of teaching so superbly that no student can leave unaffected. We must provide inspiring classes. We must be excellent teachers. I should add, parenthetically but emphatically, that this emphasis on teaching does not signal a retreat from our commitment to significant research. Nevertheless, teaching will assume its rightful, primary role. Faculty members are hired to teach—not merely to grade, expose, prod, frighten, or reject their brothers and sisters, but to teach. Neither the sophisticated child abuse of sarcasm nor the cheap thrill of torturing the unprepared has any place in that privilege.

My long experience as a faculty member and administrator in higher education alerts me to a response that could vitiate most of what I say today. Academic types have long known that imperfections genially acknowledged may be made to appear appealingly human—and therefore not really subject to change. We have an easier time joking about being late, for instance, than simply arriving on time. Similarly, with a little whimsy, yellowed notes can seem venerable. In fact, we academics would often rather be amusing than answerable. Our faults are acceptable if we can make them appear funny. The mild disdain that some faculty affect when teacher evaluations are mentioned usually prompts an easy laugh—and little else.

Our disposition to be stand-up comics in class manifests a touching belief that a teacher, to be interesting, should be obviously entertaining. How often I must have mistaken the giggling of nervous students for widespread appreciation of my wit! I even recall—a bit shamefacedly—that I was in top form when I bon moted my carefully nurtured weaknesses, as if I could prop the improper with a joke.

While we need to avoid taking ourselves too seriously, we should be equally sensitive to the inherent dignity of our roles. Dignity has nothing to do with pomposity and little with solemnity, but it has a great deal to do with words like concern, accountability, and self-respect. A joke may make our point memorably and precisely, but in humor, as in so many human expressions, the easiest and widest appeal is also the grossest. The loss of dignity that usually accompanies classroom jocularity degenerates into something far more frightening when the relaxation of laughter leads to inappropriate familiarities between teacher and student. No one feels like laughing when I must ask for a resignation from a faculty member who began by “just kidding around” with class members.

Now I would not have everyone feel vaguely guilty for that which is statistically very small. In tragic dimension, however, the rare case is overwhelming. During the coming year, I hope we can all conduct a thoughtful self-evaluation before our formal stewardship interviews. I can assure you that the president takes very seriously his annual interview with me, and I am not tempted to toss off with a quip that which focuses soberly on my performance and my worthiness to be at BYU.

I am especially sensitive this fall to what we might be—and must be—because my wife and I shared an unforgettable experience this summer. In June [1978], I was privileged to accompany Shirley to a regional meeting in East Germany, where she represented the Relief Society General Board. As a result of that visit, I am convinced that will rather than circumstance determines what I do and what effect I have in the organizations to which I belong. After the sobering maze of Checkpoint Charlie, we drove to Dresden during the late afternoon and evening. The calculated neatness of forest and field was attractive, even soothing, and the city of Dresden has undergone major rebuilding during the past few decades.

We did not begin to fully sense the circumstances surrounding East German members until we drove up to the old barracks building in which the Church is allowed to meet. I stress that we sensed the circumstances, because no one ever spoke aloud about them. To our explicit questions, branch members gave candid answers. They were neither afraid nor embarrassed to describe their status, but they obviously saw little point in complaining, explaining, or trying to live in anticipation of major change. The challenge of their situation was not to the Church but to them. What they had was enough because they had the gospel, and the truth is always whole.

When branch members sang the words, “If the way be full of trial, weary not,” they betrayed not a hint of resignation, only full-throated affirmation. They were refreshingly free from resentment, pettiness, carping—all the self-imposed fetters that keep many of us in abject bondage. The members were so grateful to have the gospel that it shone in their eyes and gave their casual conversation grace and authority. The collective “Amen” at the end of each talk was a hosanna shout that made my heart pound with resolve. Apparently the Saints in East Germany had learned the profound truth that material forces may coerce circumstances, but attitude is subject only to spirit; human agency remains inviolate.

The perspective that such knowledge provides can keep any life in order, but it can have special meaning at BYU. Here, that perspective can give a gospel context to all we do. If, in the past, we have been quick to point out that our discipline does not fit easily on a theological or even a religious base, we may need to review our attitudes rather than our curricula. Our students may find little that is uniquely LDS in a calculus class, but they will unerringly recognize us as brothers or sisters in the gospel when we discipline them without rancor or when they see our commitment to everyone’s success.

Of course, we can avoid light-mindedness or excessive familiarity, suffuse our teaching with brotherly or sisterly concern, and still not achieve the results we seek. Why? Because the significant effects of great teaching are rarely immediate, for they are more fundamental than training and more general than explicit preparation. Learning to think logically is a skill that an ordinary teacher might help us achieve. Developing the gauges to use in deciding what to think about is often the result of good teaching. While the power to discriminate precisely and wisely and the will to bring our full resources to bear as needed are hallmarks of great teaching, the great teacher usually has had such a total impact that we are hard pressed to identify the teacher’s exact contribution. Descriptions of great teaching tend to be more poetic than literal, for every example of such teaching contains an ongoing, infinitely renewing, never-quite-captured quality that finally reduces the describer to silent eloquence.

Perhaps the paradox of faith that opens Hebrews 11 is the closest we can come to qualifying the educative process. For education is a fundamental expression of faith—truly the “substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1). Teachers who believe in what they teach will always have the fluency of enthusiasm. Those who believe in their students will add the excitement of expectation. The combination is potent, far more powerful than techniques that substitute procedure for enthusiasm and norms for expectation.

If we as BYU faculty have the faith to move the mountains of secular misinformation that inhibit our full flowering, we can enjoy tremendous potential for good. After all, gospel principles—not human theories—undergird our every approach. If we truly believe that every person is a child of God, beloved of a Heavenly Father and capable of eventual godhood, we will be able to teach each one. Anything less is to mock the Lord to his face. Similarly, if we believe in repentance, we will be slow to categorize and quick to forgive. A student’s academic transcript, for example, is a dubious theological document in that it may forgive, but it does not forget. Likewise, if we accept Jesus’ parable about the laborers in the vineyard (Matt. 20:1–16), we need to question seat time—and perhaps even credit hours—as the basis for graduation. I could easily extend the foregoing list, but I do not need further examples to make my point. If the Savior is to be our example of teaching, we will look in vain for his sense of humor or “chummy” interpersonal relationships. We will, however, find compassion, reiterated instruction, and a commitment to the least as well as the greatest.

A prophet of God has promised that BYU will one day surpass all other educational institutions. I believe that firmly. While we would be foolish to overstate where we are now, we would be overly modest and unbelieving to underestimate the progress we have made and are currently making. No one at BYU is here by happenstance. Each one of us has a significant part to play if we can unite both faith and vision. Indeed, I look for the day when BYU moves to its own music, in confidence born of superb preparation and in determination generated by an implacable conviction that we are fulfilling prophetic destiny. Our students will set the standard by which the world will judge BYU’s educational effectiveness, for our students will reflect a distinctive general education, a solid grounding in religious truth, and a specialized edge that simply cannot be matched elsewhere.

We are rapidly acquiring the resources to achieve such a distinction. In fact, material support for such an ambitious undertaking is now at hand. The explicit challenge of this year and succeeding years can only be whether we individually have the will, the spiritual drive, to turn vision into actuality. Are we committed and skillful enough to overcome selfish insecurities and petty differences? Are we worthy to be inspired as we seek solutions to vexing problems? Are we prepared to be instruments by which the Lord can hone and shape his covenant children?

I am persuaded that you faculty members are now much of what you need to be. I am further persuaded that our faculty can soon rise to the full academic and spiritual stature that will be demanded of those who set the beat by which higher education marches during the next decade. We have hanged our harps on the willows and mourned our deficiencies long enough. The time is now. We are the fulfillment of earlier promise and the harbinger of continuing achievement. I salute what you are and await with eagerness what you yet will be. The fruit of our thoughts will bless those whom we serve and honor: the great man after whom this university is named, the prophets who presently lead us, and the Father in whom we have our being.