What would you do to continue your child's education if circumstances caused your child's school to close temporarily or permanently. Does their education stop just because the school is closed for a few days, or if they close it due to lack of funds?

NO! Learning never ends.

-- and I offered them resources so they could always provide their children education for a lifetime. (I also emphasized the continuing education we must have as adults as well)

In my handout I included quotes which I've copied below, by the Latter-day Prophets and send them to share with you. If ever you come across someone who says, "the Church is against home schooling" (believe me people have actually said this to me!) you can hand them this list of quotes and ask them what they think the Prophets have been trying to say to us!

Supportively,

Ann

Perhaps most significant of all classrooms is the classroom of the home. It is in the home that we form our attitudes, our deeply held beliefs. It is in the home that hope is fostered or destroyed. Our homes are the laboratories of our lives. What we do there determines the course of our lives when we leave home. Dr. Stuart E. Rosenberg wrote in his book The Road to Confidence, "Despite all new inventions and modern designs, fads and fetishes, no one has yet invented, or will ever invent, a satisfying substitute for one's own family."

May our homes be a library of learning. An essential part of our learning library will be good books. Reading is one of the true pleasures of life. In our age of mass culture, when so much that we encounter is abridged, adapted, adulterated, shredded, and boiled down, it is mind-easing and mind-inspiring to sit down privately with a congenial book. James A. Michener, prominent author, suggests: "A nation becomes what its young people read in their youth. Its ideals are fashioned then, its goals strongly determined." The Lord counseled, "Seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith" (D&C 88:118). Of course, the standard works offer the ultimate library of learning of which I speak. Let us read from them often, both privately and with our families, that we may be enlightened and edified and draw closer to the Lord.

What has happened to our schools? There are still many that are excellent, but there are very many that are failing. What has become of the teaching of values? We are told that educators must be neutral in these matters. Neutrality in the teaching of values can only lead to an absence of values. Is it less important to learn something of honesty than to learn something of computer science?. . . . Where today are the heroes from whose lives we learned honesty and integrity and the meaning of work? The debunkers of Washington and Lincoln have done their job and we all are the poorer for it.

....tragically, we are experiencing a moral and ethical disaster. We cannot continue the trend that we are presently experiencing without catastrophe overtaking us.

Temple. One other word is equal in importance to a Latter-day Saint. Home. Put the words holy temple and home together, and you have described the house of the Lord!"

In many places it is literally not safe physically for youngsters to go to school. And in many schools--and its becoming almost generally true--it is spiritually unsafe to attend public schools. Look back over the history of education to the turn of the century and the beginning of the educational philosophies....which have led us now into a circumstance where our schools are producing the problems that we face.

Moral values are being neglected and prayer expelled from public schools on the pretext that moral teaching belongs to religion. At the same time, atheism, the secular religion, is admitted to class, and our youngsters are proselyted to a conduct without morality.....we are caught in a current so strong that unless we correct our course, civilization as we know it will surely be wrecked to pieces...The distance between the church and a world set on a course which we cannot follow will steadily increase.

Given the gravity of current conditions, would parents be willing to give up just one outside thing, giving that time and talent instead to the family?

..this rising generation is the first generation to be reared in a time when society's other institutions, previously supportive of certain moral standards, have largely been neutralized, or worse, secularized. This rising generation, basically shorn of such external support systems, therefore must believe because of the word, and behave because they believe. As we all know, current film, music, art, and theater too often promote drugs, alcohol, pornography and promiscuity..this is not simply a temporary tidal wave which ere long will pass. It is the wave-tossed secular sea itself, and it will not subside until He comes and all the winds and the waves once again obey His will. Hence this is not a time for busy or preoccupied parents to leave our youth unloved, unattended, or untaught.

There are two areas I would determine to improve if that privilege were granted to me to have young children in our home again....to spend more time as husband and wife in a family executive committee meeting....(and) to spend more family time.

This mortal life is the time to prepare to meet God, which is our first responsibility. Having already obtained our bodies, which become the permanent tabernacles for our spirits through the eternities, now we are to train our bodies, our minds, and our spirits. Pre-eminent, then, is our using this life to perfect ourselves....so that one may give leadership to others, and to perform all necessary ordinances. Secondly comes the preparation for the subduing of the earth and the elements....To subdue self is not only the more important but also the more difficult. Many men have power over certain natural forces who cannot control their own desires, urges, passions.

We have this life of limited years in which to learn of God, to become the masters of our own destiny and secondly, we have this life plus eternities to learn of the earth and the things thereon, and to accumulate secular knowledge which will help make us gods, which is our destiny....Peter and John had little secular learning, being termed ignorant. But Peter and John knew the vital things of life; that God lives and that the crucified, resurrected Lord is the Son of God. They knew the path to eternal life. This they learned in the few decades of their mortal life. This exaltation meant godhood for them and creation of worlds with eternal increase for which they would probably need, eventually, a total knowledge of the sciences. But this fact escapes many: Peter and John had only decades to learn and do the spiritual but have already about nineteen centuries in which to learn the secular or the geology of the earth, the zoology and physiology and psychology of the creatures of the earth....

Can you see why spiritual training through the Church organizations, family life, seminary, and other agencies must be given priority over the secular? Can you see why a mission should be an unalterable preferred activity to the college work?...Can you see why the Lord emphasized: "....seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." (Matthew 6:33)

I am opposed to free education as much as I am opposed to taking property from one man and giving it to another....Would I encourage free schools by taxation? No!

We want....to be alive in the cause of education. We are commanded of the Lord to obtain knowledge, both by study and by faith, seeking out of the best books [see D&C 88:118]. And it becomes us to teach our children, and afford them instruction in every branch of education calculated to promote their welfare. We are here, as a people,...not to imitate the world, unless it be in that which is good...but that we may put ourselves in possession of every truth, of every virtue, of every principle of intelligence known among men, together with those that God has revealed for our special guidance, and apply them to our everyday life, and thus educate ourselves and our children in everything that tends to exalt man...

Whatever you do, be choice in your selection of teachers. We do not want infidels to mold the minds of our children. They are a precious charge bestowed upon us by the Lord, and we cannot be too careful in rearing and training them. I would rather have my children taught the simple rudiments of a common education by men of God, and have them under their influence, than have them taught in the most abstruse [or complex] sciences by men who have not the fear of God in their hearts. . . /Teachings of Presidents of the Church/

Man, by philosophy and the exercise of his natural intelligence, may gain an understanding, to some extent, of the laws of Nature. But to comprehend God, heavenly wisdom and intelligence are necessary.

It is good for men to be taught in the history and laws of nations, to become acquainted with the principles of justice and equity, with the nature of disease and the medicinal properties of plants, etc. But there is no need of their being without the knowledge of God, for in fact every branch of true knowledge known to man has originated in God, and men may become in possession of it from his word or from his works....All the intelligence which men possess on earth, whether religious, scientific, or political---proceeds from God. Every good and perfect gift proceeds from him, the fountain of light and truth, wherein there is no variableness nor shadow of turning. The knowledge of the human system has proceeded from the human system itself, which God has organized.

He, from his earliest recollection, had been taught to reverence the Bible as the word of God, to revere the lives and examples of the ancient worthies . . . . yet all these men, the friends, associates and confidants of the great Creator of heaven and earth, were men with more than one wife, some with many wives, yet they still possessed and rejoiced in the love and honor of the great Judge of all the world . . . And there, in this ignominious position, he stands, [on trial for polygamy] with every person who might possibly be his friend excluded from the jury, without the possibility of a fair trail by his peers, not one of the panel being in the least sympathy with himself; and by such people this unfortunate young gentleman has to be tried, judged, prosecuted, proscribed, and condemned, because of his firm and unswerving faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, of David, Solomon, and numerous other God-fearing and honorable men . . . . no wonder then that our would-be reformers are so anxious to exclude the Bible from our district schools.

And then we want to study also the principles of education, and to get the very best teachers we can to teach our children; see that they are men and women who fear God and keep his commandments. We do not want men or women to teach the children of the Latter-day Saints who are not Latter-day Saints themselves. Hear it, you Elders of Israel and you school trustees! We want none of these things. Let others who fear not God take their course; but it is for us to train our children up in the fear of God. God will hold us responsible for this trust. Hear it, you Elders of Israel and you fathers and you mothers!

Parents . . . do you surround your sons and daughters with every safeguard to shield them from the arts of the vile? . . Or do you leave them in their ignorance and inexperience to mix with any society they may choose, at any hour that may be convenient to them, and to be exposed to the wiles of the seducer and the corrupt? These are questions you will all have to answer either to your shame and condemnation or to your joy and eternal happiness.

You have elected me Superintendent of Common Schools, and I feel a good deal of interest in the welfare of Common Schools, and also in all of our institutions of learning, where good education can be had, for I feel interested in our youth, and I take this opportunity to speak to the whole country in relation to this matter. I can perceive quite an interest in educational matters, manifesting itself in our brethren who preside here; and I am much gratified in it. I hope that this whole county will go at this matter in all good faith, and where you lack good school-houses put them up; and when you have already the school-house, but lack the furniture, get it and try to make the school-house comfortable for the children; and then good teachers who are good Latter-day Saints. Shall we have them, or shall we employ teachers that will turn the infant minds of our children away from the principles of the Gospel, and perhaps lead them to darkness and death? Some say, "You ought to be very generous, quite as liberal and generous as others." I think so. But if some of these liberal people, who talk so much about liberality, would show a little more of it, we would appreciate it a little better. I would like to know if a Methodist would send his children to a Roman Catholic School, or vice versa? I think not. Do either send their children to "Mormon" schools, or employ "Mormon" teachers? I think not. Do we object to it? No, we do not; we accord to all classes their rights, and we claim rights equal with them. Well, shall we, after going to the ends of the earth to gather people to Zion, in order that they may learn more perfectly of His ways and walk in His paths, shall we then allow our children to be at the mercy of those who would lead them down to death again? God forbid! Let our teachers be men of God, men of honor and integrity, and let us afford our children such learning as will place our community in the front ranks in educational as well as religious matters. But would we interfere with other religious denominations? No. Prevent them from sending their children where and to whom they please? No. Or from shipping where they please? No. I would not put a hair in their way, nor interfere with them in any possible way; they can take their course, and we want the same privilege.

....by the end of the millennium, for those who will occupy the celestial kingdom, the home will be the only medium of teaching children. Teaching will be through the family.

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