You don’t have to be a Mormon to disagree with the idea that you should never insert your own point of view. I’m afraid that teachers who scrupulously avoid taking a position are likely to teach their students to do the same thing: avoid taking a position! This is, of course, the exact opposite of the intended result, but I see a lot of evidence that this is what most students actually learn. There is a big difference between taking a position in class, though, and expecting your students to accept that position. In philosophy (which I teach), I don’t grade students on the conclusions they come to; I grade them on the quality of their reasoning, and the understanding of the ideas we have studied that they display in expressing and supporting their own conclusions. So they certainly don’t have to agree with me to get a good grade. But while I usually take the standard, “hands-off” approach, there are times when I think I need to take a position and defend it.

For example, I think my students have been pretty thoroughly taught not to have any ethical convictions. I have had some really unnerving discussions in class. One day we were reading Plato, and one of the characters, Callicles, had said that the strong have the moral right to take what they want. I asked my students what they thought of this idea, just to see if they were awake. Many of them said they thought Callicles was right. I asked them about some concrete instances to see if they were serious. I asked about slavery. No one was ready to say with confidence that slavery is wrong! To bring it into the present, I asked about child sex slavery (a problem, for example, in contemporary Thailand, but probably also in this country in a different form). One student was bold enough to say, slowly, as though it was a tough call, “Well, I think child sex slavery is wrong, but that’s just my personal opinion.” !@#%!!

Students need their teachers to model what it is to hold a well-reasoned opinion–for that matter to hold an opinion at all on some subjects!

I think Mormons, though, for theological reasons, may have special resources for striking the right balance between the extremes of authoritarian teaching (which either leaves the students unpersuaded, or damages their ability to hold their own opinion), and “hands-off” teaching that is so “hands-off” that it teaches students to be indifferent, think everything is just opinion anyway, take no position, etc. In reality students need a more subtle cultivation of their ability to think. With most young students, at least, their ability to think well needs to be actively cultivated, and since broadly the same process of cultivating agency is (as I interpret it) what we believe God is doing with us, I think we may have a particularly good basis for (or at least reasons to try) understanding how this should work.

LDS manuals seem to regard LDS scripture and LDS historical documents (like the History of the Church) as facts to use and GA commentary as the only allowable interpretive commentary for those facts. Quotation of or even citation to any scholarship (even BYU profs or FARMS materials) to extend those facts or provide enlightening interpretive commentary seems verboten in manuals. This seems like an unduly restrictive way to prepare a curriculum. Correlation doesn’t have to be this way.

We use knowledge to think and until we know an awful lot about something, we won’t think about it critically or intelligently. I favor a teaching heavy with knowledge and facts, usually. It’s true these are readily available but it’s not true lots of student readily look them up, and facts organized for particular purposes can have the force of revelation.

I do think we can help students think better–with more complexity–by drawing their attention to anomalies in their thinking, but the best way to do this is usually just to present yet another fact that their theory doesn’t adequately account for. It’s an abundance of information that makes better thinking necessary and that also makes it possible.

People who know an awful lot about a topic, whether that’s global warming or early church history or the mechanics of an internal combustion engine, tend to think about those topics quite skillfully. People who lack the facts usually do an abysmal job.

I think this works the same for Mormons and others.

I do think when we are teaching religious beliefs where so much of the knowledge is subjective, we sometimes start by telling young people not how to think but what to think. Hopefully, they will be through some of the worst crises before their innate tendency for critical thinking kicks in. I know lots of critical thinkers, for example, who did their own thinking about marriage and the meaning of their sexuality, who’ve made quite a botch of things. It would have been better if they had followed the wise counsel of teachers who thought it mattered that they thought correctly more than it mattered whether their thinking was original.

People who believe that they know truths that arise from revelation will often teach about those truths differently than will people who believe truth has different origins. Ethically, I think a bearer of revealed truth has a higher obligation to those truths than to students, or, at least, it would be a harm to those students not to stand first for those truths.

The most important teaching is a love of truth which is taught by loving truth, even when it hurts.

It is true, we can never reach Full Truth, but that is still is the goal we seek.

#13: Raymond, you just went to a better school than I did, In Art, we never got passed Rockwell. I am a Swede, which means I tell the truth, the whole truth, and sometimes even MORE that the whole truth.

Again, realizing it is impossible to teach the “whole truth”, each teacher needs to teach the concept or principle that is the heart of the lesson the best way possible. Using the polygamy sentence, it might be appropriate when reading it to add something like, “which includes practicing it” – then moving on. To discuss it or elaborate on it means taking time from the lesson focus – literally prioritizing the polygamy discussion over the intended lesson. The manual clearly says it doesn’t address polygamy. Why insert it into a lesson in any way that takes time from the intended discussion?

Just to make this clear: I have no problem “bring(ing) up something that’s not in the manual and the scriptures”. I agreed with discussing the evolution of priesthood offices. I interject comments and insights from the Bloggernacle, Bushman, outside experts, etc. regularly when I speak in various wards and teach lessons – at all levels. I just try to make sure it contributes to a better understanding of the main principle of the lesson and won’t turn the lesson into a contentious debate among the members in the class.