--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Miller, John T. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 32 number: 7 published: 1929-05 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: "John T. Miller, “Education vs. Legislation and Law Enforcement,” *Improvement Era* 32, no. 7 (May 1929): 561–564." source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera3207unse 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: improvementera3207unse start_page: 561 end_page: 564 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1929-05) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera3207unse publication_year: 1929 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 1929, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Education vs. Legislation and Law Enforcement Education vs. Legislation and Law Enforcement By Dr. John T. Miller THERE are two methods of influencing the behavior of people. One is through education. The other is through legislation and law enforcement. When education is at its best it helps human beings to harmonize the organs of the body and to develop the primary elements of mind harmoniously. It is the fear of pun- ishment instilled by law enforcement that should keep people from doing wrong, but does it? Long ago it was reported that the Prophet Joseph Smith was once asked how he governed his people so well. It is said that he replied, "I do not govern them. I teach them correct principles and they govern themselves." Does the education of today develop self-control? About the middle of last century Horace Mann, Amer- ica's greatest educator, said: "When I look back to the playmates of my childhood; when I remember the acquaintances which I formed with nine college classes; when I cast my eye over the circles of men with whom pro- fessional and public duties made me conversant. I find amongst all these examples that for one man who has been ruined for the want of intellect or attainment hundreds have perished for the want of morals, and yet with the disproportion between the causes of human ruin we go on bestowing at least a hundred times more care and pain and cost in the education of the intellect than in the culti- vation of the moral sentiments and in the establishment of moral principles. From year to year we pursue the same course of naviga- tion with all these treasure-laden vessels going down to destruction around us and before us, when if the ocean in which thev are $unk were not fathomless and bottomless the wrecks ere this would have filled it solid to the surface." More recently that great pioneer educator of the Rocky Moun- tains, Dr. Karl G. Maeser, said on page 37 of his book School and Fireside : "The prevailing system of feverish competition in our public schools, emphasizing as it does intellectual advancement to the al- most entire neglect of every other requirement, engenders a spirit of selfish ambition, an evil which sadly mars the characters of many of our most prominent public men today. The educational methods prevailing in the public schools and homes in America, more than 562 IMPROVEMENT ERA May. 19Z9 anywhere else in civilized countries, neglect the cultivation of rever- ence. Hence the disregard for parental authority, out of which grows disloyalty to the laws of our country, disregard for the feeling and rights of fellow-men and a growing discontent with the condi- tions of society. No man can ever be true to his God who has not learned to be true to his home, his country and to humanity." During the past ten years 24 varieties of intelligence tests have been devised, and many have come to believe that they have reached a finality in the study of mind and character development. But in studying 1,000 brilliant children Prof. Terman of Stanford found that in one-fourth of them there was a low character quotient con- nected with the high intelligent quotient. Supt. Nellis of the Whit- tier State School for boys told the writer that his best teamsters, dairymen, farmers, and mechanics had been declared sub-normal by the intelligence tests. The writer has studied all the boys and girls in the reform schools of three states and among them he found some of the keenest intellects that he has found anywhere, but they were associated with uncontrolled impulses. There is still too much effort in education to make high marks intellectually and to neglect character building. Vocational, moral and child guidance have been retarded throughout the world for the lack of a system of hu- man nature as a basis for such work. In his valuable article on "Guidance of Youth," which appeared in the March Improvement Era, Dean Bennion said: "In the inter-mountain region little has been done to assist boys and girls to solve these most baffling prob- lems." At the educational convention held in Los Angeles, Dec. 18, 1928, State Supt. Cooper, who is now United States Commissioner of Education, said: "The greatest weakness in California's present secondary school system is its failure to offer students more personal counsel. * * * Guidance and counsel would be of the greatest value but we have in California no system for offering counsel to high school students. Guidance in the better use of leisure would prevent much juvenile delinquency." While the writer was giving guidance to 2500 high school and college students in the schools of El Paso, Texas, he received a letter from one of the leading educators of America in the which the following occurs: "I am greatly interested in the work you are doing. Efficient guidance is the greatest lack in our educational system today. If you have methods of guidance which are prac- tical and scientifically accurate, you certainly ought to let the world know about it." If the system of human nature used by Horace Mann and Dr. Karl G. Maeser as the basis for all their educational work were uni- M<>y- <929 EDUCATION VS. LEGISLATION 563 versally adopted and taught from the kindergarten up, many of our most perplexing problems of human culture would be solved. The most significant thing in education today is that the emphasis is being taken off the intellect and placed upon the feelings. This movement is being led by the psychiatrists. It is being discovered that vice and crime are due to uncontrolled impulses and not to feeble intellects. The abuse of a few primary elements of mind causes not only juvenile delinquency but also adult crime. Drunkenness and gluttony are the abuse of appetite. Stubbornness is the abuse of firmness. Quarreling and fighting are abuse of courage. Theft is the abuse of thrift and acquisitiveness. The social evil is the abuse of the powers of reproduction. Dishonesty is the abuse of conscience. All the primary elements of mind are good if they are used right. Education must unfold and train all the elements of mind to produce love, harmony and unity. Law enforcement is necessary under present conditions, but the more efficient education becomes the less need there will be for law enforcement. When individuals get such good self-control that they can rule from within there will not be need to suppress from without. On page 271 of The Problem Child in Schools, Prof. Nudd makes this significant statement: "While the emotional life of the child, which gives rise to the attitudes toward experiences which determine behavior, has long been recognized as an important factor in education, it has remained more in the realm of theory than of practice. This has been due, not only to the traditional notion of the school as an agency for imparting information and manual skill, but also to the well-nigh universal absorption of educators in the dramatic movement to meas- ure intelligence and achievement, and to a lack of knowledge and means to deal adequately with problems of behavior." Just as the machinery to take care of the sick is necessary today, so the machinery for law enforcement is necessary. But both science and revelation testify that disease can be prevented through proper education; vice and crime can be prevented in the same way. Where can the remedy be best applied? In the institutions where people are trained to be the custodians and trainers of human lives. They must make the study of human nature the basis for all their work. If the mind is to be properly trained the trainer, whether parent, teacher, minister, doctor, social worker, or what not, must know the primary elements of mind and how to adjust them to produce har- mony. Thirty years ago Herbert Spencer was considered the greatest philosopher of his time. He saw the lack of human culture educa- tion and offered this criticism: "If by some strange chance not a 564 IMPROVEMENT ERA May, 19Z9 vestige of us descended to the remote future save a pile of our school books or some college examination papers, we may imagine how puzzled an antiquary of the period would be on finding in them no indication that the learners were ever likely to be parents. 'This must have been the curriculum for their celibates,' we may fancy him concluding. 'I perceive here an elaborate preparation for many things: especially for reading the books of extinct nations and of co-existing nations (from which, indeed, it seems clear that these people had little worth reading in their own tongue) ; but I find no reference whatever to the bringing up of children. They could not have been so absurd as to omit all training for the gravest of all responsibility. Evidently, then, this must have been the school course of one of their monastic orders.' " Since then all kinds of courses have been prepared on parent education and child training, but none of them have as a basis the true science of mind or a study of human nature. The remedy for this defect must be furnished by training schools. Their failure in this important work is com- mented on by one of America's leading educators, Prof. M. V. O'Shea, on pages 39 and 53 of his book Education as Adjustment, as follows: "Nowhere apparently has formalism been more evident than in the training of the teacher. The normal schools have in the past been great dispensaries of formalism; they have taught rules rather than human nature; they have tried to make the teacher a shopman instead of a naturalist. * * * The men in the Normal schools are not utilizing their unsurpassed opportunities to observe the out- come of studies and methods upon developing children. The Normal school belongs very largely to the genus shop rather than to the genus laboratory. It spends its energies in applying what it thinks is truth rather than in adding to the body of truth, or even in testing in any critical way what it has inherited from the past." After observing the work of teachers for 35 years in the schools of more than 1,000 cities around the world, I am convinced that to develop a system of education that will lessen the need for legisla- tion and law enforcement there must be a human-nature basis for the training given to teachers so that they can harmonize the lives of children. "Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this Administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal sig- nificance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation." — Abraham Lincoln.