Brigham Young University BYU ScholarsArchive Theses and Dissertations 1966 A Proposal for a Section of an LDS Church History Textbook for High School Students Containing the History of the Church from 1898 to 1951 Arthur R. Bassett Brigham Young University - Provo Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd Part of the History Commons, and the Mormon Studies Commons BYU ScholarsArchive Citation Bassett, Arthur R., "A Proposal for a Section of an LDS Church History Textbook for High School Students Containing the History of the Church from 1898 to 1951" (1966). Theses and Dissertations. 4509. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/4509 This Selected Project is brought to you for free and open access by BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. A PROPOSAL FOR A SECTION OF AN L.D. S. CHURCH HISTORY TEXTBOOK FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS CONTAINING THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH FROM 1898 TO 1951 A Field Project Presented To The Department of Graduate Studies in Religious Instruction Brigham Young University Provo, Utah In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Religious Education by Arthur R. Bassett August 1966 PREFACE This field project had its beginning in an assignment given to the author in 1964. During the spring of that year he was commissioned by the seminary department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints1 to formulate a lesson plan for use in teaching a seminary course of study entitled "Church History and Doctrine." As will be shown later, the need for textual material dealing with the history of Mormonism2 from 1877 to the present arose during the writing of that lesson outline. While fulfilling this assignment the author took the oppor­ tunity to interview several teachers33 who previously had taught the course mentioned above and to talk with many students who had taken this class in past years. In addition he carefully examined all of the past outlines used in teaching Church History and Doctrine, as well as teachers1 critiques of these outlines. Both the interviews and the written material pointed to one major conclusion—in past years this course of study had focused on a rather thorough coverage of the first 1A brief description of the total program of the seminaries and institutes of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is included in Chapter I. All references to "the seminary" in this report are to the seminaries of this church. 2The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Also referred to in this report as the LDS Church or simply as the Church. 3Three different committees, representing teachers from Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming and California were consulted and used as a sounding board by the author during the writing of this lesson plan. half century of the history of the Mormon Church, roughly 1820-1870, with very little post-1850 material. Consequently LDS students had come away from their seminary experience almost totally ignorant of the history of Mormonism from the middle of the nineteenth century to their own day. Several of the students interviewed had indicated a strong desire to know more concerning the recent history of the Church. Especially were they desirous to have more information regarding those who had presided over the Church during the past one hundred years of its existence. Therefore, it was decided to design the teaching man­ ual in such a way that the more recent history of Mormonism would also be taught. However, upon reviewing the literature available for use in teaching this course it soon became apparent why all past teacher out­ lines for Church History and Doctrine had concentrated on the early years of Mormonism. Practically nothing had been written which could be used as a text at a high school level4 concerning developments in the recent history of the church. For example the currently approved text for the above-mentioned course is Berrett's The Restored Church.5 This book in its current form (473 pages) contains only a twenty-five page generalized summary of the history of Mormonism since the death of President Brigham Young in 1877 to the present. It therefore became evident that the production of acceptable textual material was one of 4The LDS seminary program is geared primarily for grades nine through twelve. The course Church History and Doctrine is customarily taught at the eleventh grade level. See Chapter I for further infor­ mation on the seminary program. 5William E. Berrett, The Restored Church (11th ed. rev.; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1965.) iv the first steps in the total reconstruction of the course. It was the contention of the author at that time (and still is) that this textual material could best be written in biographical form. This approach would center the history of Mormonism in a series of biographies dealing with the lives and administrations of the men who have presided over the LDS Church since the death of the second presi­ dent, Brigham Young. The author chose this approach for three major reasons; (1) He had discovered during his years as a teacher that stu­ dents of high school age were generally more interested in studying the experiences and lives of particular individuals than they were with ab­ stract principles, mass movements or statistical information.6 (2) LDS seminary students are accustomed to studying this type history. Mormon history, especially, has traditionally been taught to young members of the Church through an approach which is primarily biographical, centering mainly in the lives of its first two presidents, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. In addition it should be noted that the leaders of the Mormon Church generally occupy a very central role in influencing the lives of its membership. Each president is viewed in Mormon theology as a prophet of God, possessing prophetic powers in the traditional Judaic-Christian understanding of that calling. Therefore, the lives and experiences of these men are of special importance to the young Mormon. will be shown in Chapter II this assumption is in agreement with the findings of George R. Klare and Byron Buck as discussed in their book, Know Your Reader: The Scientific Approach to Readability (New York: Hermitage House, 1954). v (3) If a series of biographies were used, each would overlap in time the account of the life of the man who preceded the president under consideration, as well as the biography of the man who succeeded him. The material would contain, therefore, a meaningful review factor. As the early life of each president was discussed, it would reveal in­ sights into the life and times of the administrations of one or more of his predecessors. Therefore, by the time a reader had completed all the biographies in the series, he would have reviewed events of each administration several times, with a slightly different emphasis on each occasion. These different insights would supply a more pleasing variety to the oftimes tedious but ever important task of review.8 Accordingly, during 1965 and the early months of 1966 a student supplement using a biographical approach was written by this author in an attempt to augment the approved textbook for the Church History and Doctrine course of the LDS seminaries. It was this supplement, "Church Shaffer in 1927 conducted an experiment in which he attempted to discover which style of writing--narrative, episodical, or general- ized--was most effective in teaching concepts dealing with social science. His findings indicated that style mattered very little in helping stu- dents increase their comprehension of concepts. However, he found that repetition is a very important factor in the learning process. He con­ cludes: "The gains [in comprehension] are proportional more to the num­ ber of times that the facts are read than to any other factors. It is necessary then, in arranging reading materials in the social studies to provide for sufficient practice [repetition] • The facts must be met not once, but again and again to secure adequate understanding. The shape of the learning curves implies that even four repetitions have not exhausted the possibilities for gain, as they show no sign of hav­ ing reached the limit of improvement." Laurence F. Shaffer, "A Learning Experiment in the Social Sciences," Journal of Educational Psychology. XVIII (December, 1927), 577-591. 8This seems to be one possible answer to a problem posed by Shaffer, op. cit., as to how this repetition factor could be built into the contents of a course without losing student interest. vi History As Viewed Through the Lives of the Presidents of the Church," (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1966) which was used as the basis for determining student responses and other findings referred to in Chapter IV of this report. The suggested textual material included in the second section of this field project report is a refinement of four chapters of the above-mentioned student supplement. The report of this field project is divided into two major sections. The first section (comprising four chapters) describes the theory behind the proposed text. It deals with such matters as the role of a textbook in the LDS seminaries (Chapter I), readability problems concerning content and style (Chapter II), readability problems con- cerning format and organization (Chapter III), and a description of the procedure used in validating the textbook material in this report (Chap­ ter IV) . The second section contains the proposed textual material. It is basically the original material produced by the author in four of the chapters of the student supplement discussed above, remodeled according to findings gleaned through more intensive research into literature con­ cerning textbook writing and through polling student opinion of the original draft.