--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Peterson, E. G. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 19 number: 11 published: 1916-09 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'E. G. Peterson, "The Meaning of Education. V: The Decay of the World," *Improvement Era* 19, no. 11 (September 1916): 1006–1008.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera19011unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera19011unse start_page: 1006 end_page: 1008 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1916-09) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera19011unse publication_year: 1916 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1916, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # The Meaning of Education. V: The Decay of the World V The Meaning of Education BY E. G. PETERSON, A. M., PH. D v PRESIDENT UTAH AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE V— The Decay of the World Civilization has at its heart a rottenness which seems to be slowly, cancerously, feeling its way into the whole tissue of our life. The unchaste pollute our streets and often sit in power in our great offices. The sanctity of woman and of motherhood is in too great measure a religion of the lips only. In the heart of the world is a terrible hypocrisy and a terrible blasphemy regarding — the one fundamental thing in life procreation. The world's philosophy, the world's education, much of the world's religion even, have been in measure mastered by this consuming sin of sex perversion. The subduing of the greatest brute in man is not an accomplishment of our modern civilization. What idealization of woman as a mother exists in the world exists more in spite of the world's philosophy and its education than because' of these. As a result of our complex social organization we fight for sex standards largely because we know that such standards are necessary for the perpetuation of society. Man volutarily has not adopted this standard. Modern science and art have brought us together as we were never brought so intimately together in the world's history before. Great cities have been built wherein is concentrated a large share of the world's business. Countless thousands are huddled into a few small spots on the earth's surface. We have forsaken the natural mode of life. In the cities we no longer, except in case of the wealthy, have homes where children play in ample yards. The work of the world is piecemeal. Division of labor has made each of us the doer of only a stitch in the whole fabric of the work. We ride to our tasks in electric cars or through the agency of gasoline engines. We ascend to offices in electric elevators, we est with thousands of others in cafes. We have in short in our cities become unnatural. And our bodies through long ages and our minds and our instincts have been patterned for different things. Our minds and our bodies and instincts are adjusted by nature for simpler living, for wholesome out-door work, for walking to and from our tasks, for ample breathing space, and for simple foods. THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 1007 Even those blessed by life in the open country feel constantly the touch of the world. The remote rancher reads today of happenings at Verdun yesterday. The newspaper dropped by the automobile carrier makes him aware of the day's business throughout the world. He eats food prepared and packed a thousand miles away by hundreds of individuals he will never know. The fruits of the tropics are on his breakfast table. By auto he is within a few minutes of the seat of his local government and by 'phone with all his state and even his nation. He thinks nothing of sending his children hundreds of miles for schooling. The world is socialized, knit together by the science and art of man into a close body, which tends to function as one organism. As the world has become woven together in the complexity of modern life it has lost the old restraints which simple, isolated, quiet family life produced. As we have come together the weakness, the disease, the sin of each of us has been given opportunity to spread until the twentieth century sees our civilization suffering from partial decay due to our inability to build our souls sufficiently strong to fight the decay which comes in part because of our density. In the flower of our twentieth century the statistics of illegitimacy in the centers of our population, the statistics of disease related to sex — these tell the story of our decay. The time has come in much of the world when no man and woman may know of a certainty that purity, absolute and undefiled, is in their home. There may be a terrible question between father and son. To be sure there are many clean men and many clean women many — — hundreds of thousands but they are buried in the great accumulation of immorality of the world and their poor individual efforts at reform are inadequate. The disregard for the absolute in personal virtue has become marked. The social life of our great colleges is permeated with it. Our small towns in many cases are unspeakably coarse and vulgar and noticeably impure. This disregard is the result in part of our social complexitv which reduces responsibility. And not only reduces responsibility but puts into operation many laws, not yet understood by our scholars, of such terrific power that individual motives and desires are often impossible of achievement if they run counter to these laws of our social being. Men and women, I believe, have higher and better motives today than ever before. We understand today much better than ever before the fundamental relationship of brotherhood and social dependence. The world in many ways is getting better. Yet in spite of all this clarifying of our vision, in spite of all our education and all our science and art, immorality 1008 IMPROVEMENT ERA and unchastity, are today an overshadowing concern of all goverment and all human law. Our schools and colleges must teach purity. If they teach all else and leave this out they are a mockery. If they cannot build strongly a devotion on the part of the young for cleanliness and virtue they had best not teach anything. Colleges must fight immodesty in dress and manner, because immodesty is the first step toward actual immorality. They should not do this teaching in a pedantic, perfunctory way. The wishy-washy, lily-white attitude will defeat the purpose in view. This teaching should be wholesome, red-blooded and practical. The manliness of cleanliness should be the dominant idea. The faculties in colleges should be clean the souls of the men and women who teach should ; be irrevocably clean. A course of lectures on subjects of this kind undoubtedly does some little good, but lectures cannot replace a religious devotion to the standards of morality. Only by such devotion which finds expression in every act can the end be attained. The religion which will save the world is the religion which among the first things faces this problem of sex squarely, which insists first of all upon clean men and clean women. Any religion which avoids this cannot endure. Anything of a permanent nature which is built here must be built upon personal virtue. Any accomplishment if it is performed by men diseased in body or soul will not survive. Any system of education deserving the' name must be based upon clean living and clean thinking. And let me repeat that this should ba done in straightforwardness, insisting always upon the strength of restraint in thought and act the essential nobility of the man or woman who ; is refined and self mastered. Scolding and maudlin sentimentality should find no place in our effort to make clean and strong men and women. Virtue is robust; righteousness is strongarmed and confident. LOGAN, UTAH. "But life shall on and upward go; The eternal step of Progress beats To that great anthem, calm and slow, Which God repeats. God works in all things; all obey His first propulsion from the night: Wake thou and watch — the world is gray With morning light."—Whittier.