Gordon B. Hinckley

But what, really, is “education”? And who is the “educated woman”? Some of us enroll in courses and register at universities to “get an education,” then face the dilemma of career versus family—often without considering the meaning of our own “education” and its potential effects on our homes, our professions, our families, or our own inner selves. Others of us wonder if we have missed something in life if we don’t have that degree or diploma. Sadly, sometimes we fail to consider what “education” really is, and when or how it may be acquired or its results implemented.

The meaning of education is often assumed to be somehow related to “going to school” or learning as an external experience, related only to acquiring knowledge or skills helpful toward work productivity in society. All too often, when a woman makes the conscious effort to become “educated,” she perceives her alternatives as the following: (1) to seek fulfillment outside her home, (2) to sacrifice her education in order to raise a family, or (3) to try to balance career and family in some “superwoman” fashion. But I submit that the education of a woman is much broader, comprehensive, and perhaps more personal. Let us begin by considering the term “education.” Education is seen here, in its most idealistic sense, as an unveiling of the natural thirst of the mind and soul, and subsequently their replenishment, refreshment, and expansion. Considered in its broadest sense, education may occur at school, at home, with family, at church, or even with an enlightening thought in a moment of solitude. Education is more than learning. It is a complex interactive teaching and learning process.

Perhaps this is not “education” as it is traditionally defined. What we are calling “education,” one may call enrichment, fulfillment, vision, teaching, learning, or a number of other words. Indeed, education encompasses all of these.

Obviously, this view of education is idealistic. But let us not be afraid to dream of the ideal, for “as [we] dream, so shall [we] become. [Our] vision is the promise of what [we] shall one day be; [our] ideal is the prophecy of what [we] shall at last unveil.” The educated woman is within each one of us, awaiting discovery. Thus, education is a beautiful, progressive process of “becoming.”

Each teacher and each learner are individuals with different capacities, resulting in varying degrees of quality in the process of education. A great teacher may have a less-than-great learner, or an excellent learner may interact with a barely adequate teacher. In any case, the process of education is more dependent upon the contribution, than upon the innate quality of each. Each may contribute to the quality of the other’s experience, thus creating a dynamic relationship between the two.

Such a relationship was experienced recently in my own attempt to teach my five-year-old to read music and play the piano. At age five, he cannot read and does not seem to have the attributes of a prodigy. I thought it would be much easier for both of us to begin when he had acquired some reading skills, so I promised to start lessons next year. But he was insistent and ready to learn—now. So I called upon my best creativity in helping him begin to read music. He is learning quickly, enjoying it, and contributing effectively to the described dynamic teaching-learning relationship; hence, the experience has actually contributed to my own progress toward becoming “educated.”

One author describes learning as “a continual process of growth, resulting from persistent organization and reorganization of experiences,” each adding upon and expanding the other. This process continues with bits of knowledge continually fusing toward a meaningful whole.

Now, these ideas may seem rather academic, but I do know about real life. With two boys, ages three and four, and a third at twenty-two months, there are days when my most educational experience is trying to find three pairs of socks that match. Other times my most pressing objective is to separate the breakfast cereal from the dining-room floor. Just to have us all dressed, in anything near appropriate, before 10:00 A.M. is sometimes a major academic achievement. But I also know that these idealistic, academic ideas may actually apply to any learning situation a woman may choose. It requires some effort; but mostly, it requires a vision of our potential and the potential of those we may influence.

Obviously, learning may exist in many settings and at many levels. However, let us envision a “higher” education in which the learner organizes and integrates not only facts, but attitudes and values. My training is in nursing. Constantly I see among the nurses whom I am most proud to call colleagues a vision beyond the scientific principles and skills learned. They are the special ones who exhibit more caring attitudes, and who seek greater professional values. They exemplify the idea that the inner motivation to become truly educated, to open the mind and soul to manifest their natural thirst, is more significant than the learning activity itself.

When education is considered in such a sense, we see that there may exist educated women who have never entered a university. Such a woman may enter this dynamic teacher-learner interrelationship as teacher, sharing proper values with her child, or as learner, reading an uplifting written word. The education process in uplifting reading can be most important; and I, for one, subscribe to the same philosophy of learning that Somerset Maugham suggests:

“In a great library, you get into society in the widest sense … From that great crowd you can choose what companions you please, for in these silent gatherings … the highest is at the service of the lowest, with a grand humility. … In a library you become a true citizen of the world.”

It would enhance the learning of any woman to include the scriptures as part of her quest for education, as our own prophet, President Spencer W. Kimball, admonished: “Study the scriptures. Thus you may gain strength through the understanding of eternal things. … We want our sisters to be scholars of the scriptures as well as our men.”

It is true that a woman may become “educated” in a number of ways, from candidacy for an advanced degree to personal study in her own home. To a woman educated in the sense described, her method of education is irrelevant to her “degree” of education. There are no degrees, for true education is a process of life, and not merely a means to an end.

While serving a mission in Colombia, South America, I met a humble sister who truly exemplified this principle. I knew her as Hermana Cabrera. Her tiny two-room home had no heat or electricity. She shared her only water source, a pump in the plaza, with five or six other families. She lived alone with her young son and daughter on the barest subsistence. She had attended school as a girl only long enough to learn to read. But her “educated” influence of refinement was evident all around her—in the hand-crocheted tablecloth on the rough wooden table; in the pictures of flowers and loved ones on her walls; in her constant, searching questions and study of the gospel; in the refined, dignified, mature demeanor of her children.

However a woman chooses to involve herself, it is the dynamic process of “becoming” in education that is desirable; and excellence in that education is the loftiest goal. There are a few precious people in the lives of each of us who refuse to accept less than the best of themselves, their peers, their students, or their children; not in a demanding, oppressive way, but in a stimulating, exciting manner that makes each of us want to reach a bit higher in all our worthy pursuits toward excellence.

None of us travels the road of mortality by chance. Every decision, every act, every thought, moves the direction of our lives to one path or another. Often we may choose the path of least resistance—but occasionally we catch a glimpse of our own divine nature and realize that our influence can be limitless.

Some women will choose formal, traditional routes of education, and will contribute to discoveries in science, medicine, industry, and business that will change a part of society; others will write books or create art that will challenge souls for generations. But some will make just as significant an impact on humanity by their educated influence on their own sons and daughters at their own hearths. Author Edith Hunter and others describe the important influence of an educated woman in the home: “Educated women in the home? What an odd thing to deplore! What better place to have us ‘end up’ … What more important job is there than sharing the values we are learning to cherish with the next generation of adults? What more strategic place could there be for the educated woman?”

“We fancy that God can only manage His world with battalions, when all the while He is doing it by beautiful babies. When a wrong wants righting, or a truth wants preaching, or a continent wants opening, God sends a baby into the world … perhaps in a simple home and of some obscure mother. And then God puts the idea into the mother’s heart, and she puts it into the baby’s mind. And then God waits. The greatest forces in the world are not the earthquakes and the thunderbolts. The greatest forces in the world are babies.”

It is our challenge to realize that our influence on our peers, our families, and our posterity can be limitless. And it is because of this marvelous potential and boundless influence that we are constantly warned of Satan’s plan to undermine our efforts. We cannot compromise.

With the freedom and fulfillment offered by education comes a wider field of decision. Within each of us is a capacity for improvement and the freedom to choose our own path. Our challenge, then, is to choose a path that will offer to each of us the assurance that our chosen course of life is acceptable and according to the will of God. If we are earnest and obedient in our strivings, we are promised the help and comfort of a loving Heavenly Father. We are his children, and we are rearing his children. His will is our growth, refinement, progress, and influence for good.

The potential lies within each of us to become educated as we have described, and to educate our posterity, that the human condition may be enriched and improved. The way is open for you and me to step onto a path of progression toward excellence. Education can be pursued by all of us, wherever we may be. Indeed, we have only to open our minds and hearts, drinking in the fulfillment and exhilaration that flows from the expansion of our souls.

Elaine Shaw Sorensen, “The Educated Woman within Us”, Ensign, Mar. 1983, 29

Her life-long dream had turned into what now seemed like a nightmare. During the long, hot summer days of picking potatoes and cucumbers, Alice had envisioned herself walking across the campus as a student at BYU. It was the goal that had kept her going when she would otherwise have given up.

Her determination had brought her to BYU for fall semester. And now the frustration, the pressure, the anguish that she faced seemed more like a nightmare than a reward for such effort.

She hadn’t planned it this way. In fact, after arriving she had hardly planned at all.

Alice was one of the students in my class. Somehow she hadn’t realized the big difference between going to school and learning.

Alice found the social side of college life more enticing than studying and learning. The urgency of preparing for her final exams hit her only after the opportunity for preparation had almost passed. It all seemed like a nightmare now. She must not fail, but she was unprepared. She had not committed herself to an education; she was just going to school.

She remembered people often asking her back home, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Growing up had seemed so far away until this day. Now she was searching for the answer to that question, not for them but for herself. What did she want to do with her life and how did an education fit in?

We must all face that question eventually if we are to be responsible for our lives.

When you find the answer, you’ll have a sense of what you want to learn or what kind of job you may someday have or how you can become a better mother and wife, because of your education. You’ll catch a glimpse of a bigger picture—a purpose, a destination, a course of action for this life that determines what you can become through the eternities. It’s when you catch even a glimpse of the excitement, the benefits, the opportunities, the richness of life that an education can provide, that the discipline required to study becomes a small price to pay.

With your eye toward eternity, education is the treasure you will take with you and give you so much the advantage in the world to come (see D&C 130:18–19). And for today, it opens doors to opportunities that would otherwise be closed tight. Nephi writes, “To be learned is good if they hearken unto the counsels of God” (2 Ne. 9:29). If we lack wisdom we are to ask, and when we seek diligently we will know the truth. And the truth shall make us free (see John 8:32)—free to make wise choices; free to experience life with ever-changing, wonderful, new horizons; free to speak up and speak out for what’s right; free to influence those who are seeking truth; free to prepare in the time of youth for a rich and rewarding lifetime; free to hold on to the love of learning your whole life long making every day more zestful.

Sister Camilla Kimball said, “What we must be concerned with is preparation for life, and that preparation is continuing education. Whether it is to earn a living or to rear a family, men and women both need to have the knowledge that enhances their natural talents” (address at Spencer W. Kimball Tower dedication, Brigham Young University, 9 Mar. 1982). Preparation for life is for young women who marry and those who may never marry. It’s for women who will have children to help educate and others who will not. It’s for women who will need to support themselves and their children at some time in their lives.

For some of us, this may mean going to college or a trade school. To others, it may mean home study. To all of us, it means looking at the long-term goal of making education a lifelong process, not just a two- or four-year event after high school called “higher education.”

One might ask, does pursuing an education contradict our goal to marry and have a family? Definitely not! We need to be educated for our families as well as ourselves!

With all the contradiction and confusing voices, we are going to need our own clear direction more than ever before. A young woman should always keep the goal of marriage and family foremost in the choices she makes. But she must also be prepared for other rich and wonderful experiences in building the kingdom.

A woman who is now a mother of 11 children, dreamed in college of the lights of the stage, while taking classes in philosophy, economics, and political science and majoring in theater. Now she’s on her own stage performing magnificently well. She has chosen to enrich, protect, and guard the home. This past summer she and another Mormon woman ran a campaign from their homes and were elected as two of four delegates to help choose a new leader for a political party. These same women later organized a rally in the city park on an issue they felt strongly would negatively affect life in their province in Canada.

I asked this sister how she manages to be so influential. “You have to know parliamentary procedure in public meetings,” she replied. “If you do, you can safeguard democracy and your home by using the rules effectively.”

“When and where does one learn these rules?” I asked.

She laughed and said, “Last night at supper, it went like this.”

Sarah: “Honorable chairman, the soup is good.”

Chairman: “Can I have a motion to that effect?”

Sharon: “I move that we go on record stating the soup is good.”

Chairman: “Could I have a second?” Seconded. “Any discussion?”

Amy: “It’s too spicy.”

Chairman: “We will proceed to vote.”

The results of the dinner: The soup passed. The jam passed unanimously. And the motion in favor of the water was tabled for another time pending further investigation.

A mother who is well educated can help instill that same enthusiasm for learning in her children.

Classes in home economics and child development and family relations can help strengthen our future families. And so can teaching and nursing, law and debate, political science, engineering, medicine, history, communications, and even statistics!

The question has been asked, if a woman is trained in such broad areas, will she be lured away from the home? In many ways, her education can strengthen her home. Down the road, higher education may give her more opportunity to be with her family, to set her own working hours, to have the know-how to go into business, to prepare her to meet the economic needs of her family if she must become the provider. Knowledge and intelligence are tools that can be used in righteousness or unrighteousness. Proper use can help us better protect and guard our homes.

Those who have a choice will be found protecting and guarding their families on the home front by the hearth. Others will be in foreign fields on occasion, working to keep the enemy away from our doors. Those fields may include participation in the PTA, in political parties, in civic organizations, and in various professions. Whether we are married or unmarried, with many children or none, education is important and is available right within the walls of our homes. No one needs to be deprived. We need to educate ourselves and prepare to defend our values and be a strong influence for righteousness.

When Queen Esther of the Old Testament was placed in the position to save the Jews in Persia from being put to death by appealing to her husband the king, her uncle Mordecai said to her, “Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Esth. 4:14). Just as Esther was in the palace of the king to help her people, you have important things to accomplish, many of them established before you came to this earth.

President George Q. Cannon wrote, “God has chosen us out of the world and has given us a great mission. I do not entertain a doubt myself but that we were selected and fore-ordained for the mission before the world was, that we had our parts allotted to us in this mortal state of existence as our Savior had His assigned to Him” (Gospel Truth, comp. Jerreld L. Newquist, Salt Lake City: Zion’s Book Store, 1957, 1:22).

As you seek to know the Lord’s will and choose to carry it out, he will be there to guide you, to love you, to watch over you, to help you progress and learn. And because of your much learning, there will be many opportunities when your influence, your wisdom, your voice, and your vote will make the difference—not on whether the soup passes, but whether righteousness is defended.

What you become when you grow up will be what you prepare for now.

Thomas S. Monson

Gordon B. Hinckley

“Have discipline in your preparations. Have checkpoints where you can determine if you’re on course.

“I hope that you are not afraid of tough classes. I never did have a ‘cinch’ class. I hope that you are not afraid of lengthy periods of preparation. Burn the midnight oil. Don’t procrastinate like my older sister, who after a late date rationalized, ‘I have a test tomorrow, but I am weary. What is more important, my health or my test? Aha, my health! I need my sleep.’ So she slept. I won’t say what happened to the test.

“You simply have to apply yourself. I hope that you want to be so well equipped that you can compete in this competitive world. I hope that you will learn to take responsibility for your decisions, whether they be in your courses of study which you elect to take, or whether they be in the direction of the academic attainments which you strive to achieve.

“Should you become discouraged or feel burdened down, remember that others have passed this same way; they have endured and then have achieved. When we have done all that we are able to do, we can then rely on God’s promised help.”

Thomas S. Monson

M. Russell Ballard

Henry B. Eyring

Thomas S. Monson

Henry B. Eyring

” ‘We want also to be alive in the cause of education. We are commanded of the Lord to obtain knowledge, both by study and by faith, seeking it out of the best books. And it becomes us to teach our children, and afford them instruction in every branch of education calculated to promote their welfare, leaving those false acquirements which tend to . . . lead away the mind and affection from the things of God. We want to compile the intelligence and literacy of this people in book-form, as well as in teaching and preaching; adopting all the good and useful books we can obtain; . . . instead of doing as many of the world do, take the works of God, to try to prove that there is no God; we want to prove by God’s works that he does exist, that he lives and rules and holds us, as it were, in the hollow of his hand’ (Deseret News Weekly, 5 June 1878, 275).

“May the strength of his conversion, his loyalty to the Prophet Joseph Smith and to the Church, and the articulate way in which he defended the Church with polish and refinement always be remembered.”

L. Tom Perry

Henry B. Eyring

Henry B. Eyring

Dieter F. Uchtdorf

“Approximately 61 percent of young men enroll in college immediately following high school, compared to 72 percent for young women.

“In 1950, 70 percent of those enrolled in college were males, and 30 percent were females; by 2010 projections estimate 40 percent will be males, and 60 percent will be females.”

“Women have earned more bachelor’s degrees than men every year since 1982 and more master’s degrees since 1986.

“It is plainly evident from these statistics that young women are exceeding young men in pursuing educational programs. And so I say to you young men, rise up and discipline yourself to take advantage of educational opportunities. Do you wish to marry a girl whose education has been far superior to your own? We speak of being ‘equally yoked.’ That applies, I think, to the matter of education.”

Gordon B. Hinckley