Talk:Church Educational System

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It seems to me that the "Institutes of Religion" section could be fleshed out quite a bit. In particular, one might include student organizations affiliated with Institute such as LDSSA, LDS Fraternities and Sororities, and performing groups. Any input? Sylverdin 22:09, 4 October, 2006 (UTC)

I strongly suggest that the use of the "University Infobox" be eliminated for the following reasons. CES is not a private university system. It has no chancellor. The number of instructors, administrators, and other employees exceeds 5,000. The number of individual students in CES programs exceeds one million (i.e., seminary, institute, Church Schools, BYU--Provo, including Continuing Education, BYU Idaho, BYU Hawaii, and LDS Business College). I am unaware of any university system that looks like or does what CES does. The infobox misrepresents CES on a number of levels.

I suggest that it should be re-included. CES is a private university system, containing actual universities (BYU, BYU-Idaho, BYU-Hawaii) and oferring university-level courses at institutes. It also offers courses at lower-than-university levels (seminary, misc private elementary and secondary schools). CES has no "Chancellor" but it has the equivalent, a "Commissioner". If the numbers in the infobox misrepresent CES, please fix them, don't eliminate the infobox altogether. --TrustTruth 17:03, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Church Board of Education Membership List

Dear Friends: Tonight I had the privilege of attending my brother's graduation from Seminary. On the back of the Seminary Graduation program were lists of the Board of Education on the general and local level. I learned therefrom that Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles has taken the place of Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles on the Church Board of Education. But since Board members are listed in seniority, what really happened was that Elder Richard G. Scott replaced Elder Wirthlin, Elder Robert D. Hales replaced Elder Scott, and Elder Bednar replaced Elder Hales. Consequently, I have altered the membership list to reflect the change. Thank you. --Jgstokes 02:42, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Someone keeps insisting that Russell M. Nelson and M. Russell Ballard are now members of the Board of Education to replace Elders Scott and Hales. The only reason I made the 5/21/07 change to the list of board members was because I had a program from a CES Seminary Graduation that listed the members whose changes I made. Where is the source for adding Elders Nelson and Ballard and omitting Elders Scott and Hales? As soon as I see the source, I will accept the change, but until that time, I'm reverting to last verifiable source. --Jgstokes-We can disagree without being disagreeable (talk) 00:57, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Why is a program from a CES Seminary graduation a reliable source in the first place? I don't see any reliable sources cited, so I would think the change can be made and a {cn} added to it. Snocrates 01:21, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

For that matter, since the change from Scott and Hales to Nelson and Ballard was made without an explanation or a source, reliable or otheriwse, why did this change go on without a (cn) added to it? Btw, I am not against the page as it now stands. That suits me fine, even though finding a source to confirm or deny this will be difficult. What I am against is the change made in spite of a source, reliable or otherwise. Besides, the CES seminary graduation program HAD to get its list somewhere. I assume that it was obtained from a reliable source, otherwise it wouldn't have been listed in a church-endorsed program. However, I have no real objection to the (cn) note or the page as it now stands. Jgstokes-We can disagree without being disagreeable (talk) 01:10, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

No source was listed either before or after the changes were made, so nothing has changed. Snocrates 08:46, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Sounds all right to me. I have been trying to find verifiable information for these changes and others I've heard about. As soon as I find anything, I'll let you know. Jgstokes-We can disagree without being disagreeable (talk) 01:15, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I finally found a reference proving that Nelson and Ballard are on the Church Board of Education. See Church Board of Education Execs convene at BYU. However, I'm new enough to wikipedia that I haven't yet learned how to add a footnote for a citation, and I can't find where footnote 1 is in this article so as to add footnotes for Nelson and Ballard. --Jgstokes-We can disagree without being disagreeable (talk) 21:36, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Never mind. Just figured it out. Reference added and consequently citation needed tag removed. Now, if we could only find a reference for Bednar's membership. --Jgstokes-We can disagree without being disagreeable (talk) 21:47, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

A couple of comments here. Someone keeps adjusting the Board Membership back to show Elder Neil L. Anderson as a member of the Board, rather than Elder Steven E. Snow. That is not accurate. Elder Snow is the member of the Presidency of the Seventy with the current assignment to serve on the Boards of Education/Trustees. Some of the confusion may have come from the fact that historically in recent years it often has been the senior member of the Presidency of the Seventy, but that is not the case at the present time. The second comment is that depending on how a source is defined, you'll not likely find one for this issue, or the comment above that reflects Elder Bednar's current assignment to serve on the Boards. Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by ChristensenMJ (talk • contribs) 19:08, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

I am that "someone," but it's been settled. So now either a tag needs to be added or else a source provided. I'd be fine either way. It would be so great if committee assignments, including the Church Board of Education, were voted upon as they were in President Kimball's time. That would make information like this so much easier to verify. Oh, well. --Jgstokes-We can disagree without being disagreeable (talk) 00:59, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

New President of BYU-Hawaii

To Whom It May Concern: On June 5, 2007, President Gordon B. Hinckley announced that Eric B. Shumway was being released as BYU-Hawaii President following many diligent years of service. He simultaneously announced the inauguration of Steven C. Wheelwright as President Shumway's successor. http://www.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=61a138b6b88f2110VgnVCM100000176f620aRCRD&vgnextchannel=9ae411154963d010VgnVCM1000004e94610aRCRD Since this is verifiable, consequently, I have updated this information. Thank you. --Jgstokes 04:08, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:CES-logo.gif

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BetacommandBot 04:47, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Johnson's calling as Commissioner not effective until August 1.

I had to do some major revision work a few minutes ago. A previous editor insisted on listing Elder Paul V. Johnson as the current Commissioner of Education. This same editor also had Johnson already listed among the Commissioners. But I contend that such a change should not be made until it is officially effective, and according to the source posted by this same editor and the introductory paragraph of this article, the change from Elder W. Rolfe Kerr to Johnson does not take place until August 1. Consequently, it follows that Johnson should neither be listed as the current commissioner or be listed among the other commissioners until he actually becomes the current commissioner. And that will happen in less than a month. I don't think it would damage the page any to keep the information about Kerr current until his service is terminated. Thoughts? --Jgstokes-We can disagree without being disagreeable (talk) 04:54, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Merge proposal

I've proposed that the stub LDS Seminary be merged into this article. There's not much in the article right now that also isn't in this article already, so I think a merge with a redirect would be relatively uncontroversial. Seminary#LDS Youth seminaries also exists, so the topic seems well covered without the self-standing stub. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 06:25, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

And frankly, the stub is terrible, even with the cleaning up I just gave it. Thmazing (talk) 06:31, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

BYU Hawaii spelling

The article for this entity is currently at Brigham Young University Hawaii, without a hyphen or an en-dash between "University" and "Hawaii". For this reason, the name should be spelled like this on this page as well. If that's incorrect, then efforts should be made to change the article name before the change is made here. One way or the other it should be consistent. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 23:39, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Merger proposal 2

This use of the term seminary in the LDS context seems sufficinetly unique from other uses of the term to justify the bulk of the discussion being here not at the Seminary article. I think a link to Church Educational System#Seminaries from Seminary along with incorporating any useful text from Seminary#LDS Youth seminaries is the way to go. Novaseminary (talk) 01:32, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Nobody objected, so I just merged the sections. The text (now entirely here) still needs work, though. Novaseminary (talk) 20:59, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

University of Deseret

The "History" subsection currently says that the University of Deseret was established by the LDS Church. I thought the school had actually been established by the Territorial Legislature, not the LDS Church, and was always a "state school". Now, I know that in 1850 there was little distinction between church and state, but can we identify when it ever changed hands from church ownership to state ownership? I don't think that ever needed to happen.

Also, would the University of Nauvoo qualify for this list? I have read differing views on whether it ever started operation, but I guess it's more of a secondary school. ——Rich jj (talk) 16:24, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

The University of Utah article states that it was established as the University of Deseret by the provisional State of Deseret General Assembly. As such, while that was technically a government entity, it was most certainly not recognized by the U.S. Federal Government and anything related to the State of Deseret is simply the LDS Church. It wasn't a case of little distinction between church and state, it was really a case of no distinction between church and state in early Utah and anything related to the State of Deseret. It is unclear when it was transferred to the state or its territorial predecessor government. --JonRidinger (talk) 17:35, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

I guess you're right. In March 1849 the State of Deseret constitution was drafted. On February 28, 1850 the University of Deseret was founded. Then September 9, 1850 congress created Utah Territory, with Brigham Young appointed governor on February 3, 1851. They dissolved the State of Deseret on April 4 and Utah Territory adopted its laws and ordinances on October 4. So when did the University of Deseret become part of Utah Territory? Was it when the State of Deseret was dissolved or later when its works were acquired by Utah government? Maybe nobody knows. It seems like there may have been no ownership over the school during some of this transitional period. ——Rich jj (talk) 04:01, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Marriage Requirements

Somebody should find multiple sources that claim a marriage requirement for various CES employees. For example, there is the bloggernacle rumor that you'll be dismissed if you get divorced. In addition, there's another rumor circulating that unmarried men have a year to get married or they're dismissed from their position. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.187.97.21 (talk) 03:31, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Church Board of Education

Someone cited a source for the Church Board of Education and changed the list of the board to reflect what that source said. The trouble was, the source was severely outdated--it was from 2012. The Board has experienced numerous changes since then. The Young Women General President has changed (from Elaine S. Dalton to Bonnie L. Oscarson and responsibility to be a board member has shifted from M. Russell Ballard to Richard G. Scott. This information can be verified by anyone who cares to do the research. Please do not make changes to the article unless you are absolutely sure that the information is up-to-date and accurate. Thanks. --Jgstokes (talk) 23:39, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

please do you have church education compartmentalization? Best wishes, Freda — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.248.11.31 (talk) 14:42, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Forthcoming Changes/Board Membership

I would like to thank ChristensenMJ for updating the Board list. However, I find it hard to believe that Richard G. Scott would be eliminated from the Board and no one would be called in his place. Also, a couple of changes will need to be made to this page once more information is available. On July 27, John Sears Tanner will become the new president of BYU-Hawaii. The Church will also be assigning a new Commissioner of Church Education in view of Elder Paul V. Johnson's call to serve in an area presidency, beginning August 1. I will keep tabs on all of this and provide updates as necessary. --Jgstokes (talk) 21:23, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments, Jgstokes. No new Board assignment was made with the release of Richard G. Scott. Yes, the Tanner article, as well as the one about Steven C. Wheelwright, currently reflect the announced change in president, with this page to be updated in July, along with others as needed. We'll see if the church chooses to make an official announcement regarding the change in Commissioner. ChristensenMJ (talk) 22:46, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Board of Education update

I was pleased to see that the list of members of the Church Board of Education was updated today with Dallin H. Oaks and Jeffrey R. Holland. However, David A. Bednar is also mentioned in the same source as being at the inaugural ceremonies, so I added him to the list of board members, since, until the incapacitation of Richard G. Scott, there have consistently been 3 apostles on the board. I know already that some may contend Bednar was merely there in his capacity as a former BYU-Idaho president. But if that's the case, why weren't Kim B. Clark (a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy and CES Commissioner who once was the president of BYU-Idaho) and Henry B. Eyring (First Counselor in the First Presidency and former president of Ricks College, the predecessor of BYU-Idaho) in attendance at the inauguration as well? There is a strong case for listing Bednar as a board member, which is why I included him on that list. If you disagree, please post here. --Jgstokes (talk) 07:21, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

I have reverted the assumed change because he was there as a former president, not a Board member. Kim B. Clark was in attendance. Henry B. Eyring was not there because he was not assigned to the inauguration. ChristensenMJ (talk) 12:34, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

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going to edit this page

Hi, I'm planning to edit this page--there are entire sections without in-line citations and I would like to fix that. I'm commenting here because I'm an employee at the library at Brigham Young University, which is part of the Church Educational System, so my edits could be influenced by a conflict of interest. I'm planning to focus on the historical parts of this page, and I'm open to suggestions for sources to use. Probably the biggest challenge will be finding sources that are not published by the LDS Church. Please let me know if you feel my edits or sources are overly biased or overly detailed and we can discuss that. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 18:59, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Rachel Helps (BYU), thank you for taking time to highlight the intent behind what you are wanting to do with this page. As I myself am someone someone who spent a couple of semesters on that same campus, and who was at one point considered for a job opportunity in the BYU Library, i am sure that your first-hand experience will be beneficial to this page. The main issue with this page (as is the case with several other Wikipedia pages about the Church) is finding sufficient sources that are independent enough from the Church to enable a neutral point of view to be maintained. I also happen to know a bit about conflicts of interest. I have had somewhat regular contact with a Latter-day Saint author who has a couple of articles about him and his work featured here, and at one point, he asked me, in view of my Wikipedia expertise, to represent him in dealing with some inaccuracies in those pages that went against policies. That was somewhat tricky for a while, but as long as I could back up the intention for my edits with the correct reliable sources that were neutral in relation to the matters involved, it was fairly smooth sailing. If you have any questions regarding the process of the edits you'd like to make, many people (including myself) may be able to help you work through those. Just wanted to let you know that. Thanks. --Jgstokes (talk) 20:59, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, Jgstokes. I found a few dissertations published outside of BYU about the Church Educational System. I know WP:RS cautions against using theses and dissertations ("Completed dissertations or theses written as part of the requirements for a doctorate, and which are publicly available (most via interlibrary loan or from Proquest), can be used but care should be exercised, as they are often, in part, primary sources"). So far, I've found these:

• Hartshorn, Leon Roundy (1965). Mormon Education in the Bold Years (dissertation). Stanford University.
• Payne, Allan Dean (1977). The Mormon Response to Early Progressive Education, 1892–1920 (dissertation). University of Utah.
• Haslam, Matthew J. (2000). Mormon Literacy: Reading and Writing in a Religious Context (dissertation). The University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

There's also an "official" history called By Study and Also By Faith: One Hundred Years of Seminaries and Institutes of Religion (2015) published by the LDS Church that I'd like to use. There are also a few BYU dissertations on the history of seminary, but I'm not sure yet whether I'll need them. Do you think it would be better to cite the more "independent" dissertations before going to the official history? Or maybe rely on them more for historical commentary, while the official history can supply basic facts? Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 21:32, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Sorry for my delayed response. I saw your comment earlier today, but needed to defer responding before now. Sourcing where the Church is concerned can get kind of tricky. The main reasoning for the increased volume of deletions about Church-related articles (especially those of general authorities) appears to be that the primary sources used for the information in such articles is not sufficiently independent of the article subject. But the reason that may be problematic is due to these guidelines. I am not entirely sure whether or not a similar standard of guidelines applies to an administrative board for facilities of higher education.

But I did have a thought come to mind: I have set up a subpage several times now on my user talk page that helped enable changes to be made without affecting the current content. How that would work in this case would be that I would, with your approval, move a copy of this page as is to a subpage I would publish to your user page. You can then make the edits you want to that subpage without affecting the current content. That would allow you to implement those changes and seek feedback from myself and other users via this talk page. Once you have made all of the necessary changes, if there are no major objections to or concerns regarding the nature of those revisions, then I would be able to copy the edited subpage and paste it to this article, and we would then need to enlist someone else to merge the histories of the edits on the subpage with those of this page as it would then exist. I know that might sound confusing, but I can tell you from my own experience that it works, and is a zero-risk way of fine-tuning a massive number of new changes without affecting the current page in the process. Once I have your permission to do so, I will get the ball rolling by creating the subpage. But I won't do it without your okay. How does that sound? --Jgstokes (talk) 04:27, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the offer, but I don't think it's necessary to edit this page on a separate subpage. The page itself doesn't have a lot of editing going on right now, and I'm happy to respond to concerns here on the talk page. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 21:18, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Not a problem. If you change your mind, let me know. I look forward to seeing more about the changes you have in mind. --Jgstokes (talk) 01:05, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Addition of "Letter to a CES Director" to the see also

I believe that there should be a link to the Letter to CES Director. It is a significant criticism of what Runnells views as a failing of the Church Education System as stated in his conclusions section [1]. I leave it to the collective to see if it belongs in this article. Epachamo (talk) 01:12, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for weighing in here. While I can't (and therefore won't) speak for anyone else, a few years ago, there was a Wikipedia article about that letter, which was subsequently subject to a deletion nomination that resulted in its' removal as not significant per Wikipedia standards. In my view, that's strike one against the idea of including it. Additionally, the letter in question not only cites inadequate answers to doctrinal questions from teachers within the Church Educational System, but also demonstrates clearly that, in the author's view, satisfactory answers to those questions had not been provided by any leader of the Church at any level to the writer's satisfaction. Since that directly involves parameters outside a general mention of the Church Educational System, that appears to be strike two against the idea of including information about it here. In fact, due to the nature of the specific questions in said letter, it would be better suited to mention it in a criticism section or article elsewhere on Wikipedia. And if there is a more specific place to put such a link, that's essentially strike three against the general idea of putting it here. In nearly 1.5 decades of experience here on Wikipedia, it's been abundantly clear to me that having one good reason for including or excluding content anywhere on Wikipedia is sufficient enough, so when there's three good reasons to not mention the letter in question on this page, that is a pretty clear indicator to me that the mention of it should go elsewhere, especially since the letter had a more wide-spread impact elsewhere in the Church (such as in the case that it lead an area seventy in Europe, along with at least one of his siblings, to leave the Church) than it did specifically on the Church Educational System. If the consensus supports including it, I might be persuaded to accept that, but based on what I've laid out here, it's probably better-placed elsewhere vs. being more out of place here based on what I've described. Thanks. --Jgstokes (talk) 01:58, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

• Comment. I think that there should be a "see also" link to the letter (or the portion of the author's article that deals with the letter). The fact that the letter is named after this organization is reason enough. This (including a link to something that shares a name) is very commonly done in the "see also" section of article space. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 02:16, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

I made the initial revert, but I'm open to change. I agree with Jgstokes that in my personal knowledge of LDS culture, the CES Letter seemed to have more of an effect on criticisms of the church. However, I haven't actually done any research on the subject--I wonder if there's a secondary source that would connect the CES Letter with a response in better historical accuracy from church publications (though it seems those have been coming from the Church Historian's office and not CES). Has anything in the CES changed as a result of the letter? If it's relevant to this page, maybe there should be a "criticisms" section on this page that includes a summary? Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 16:38, 24 August 2020 (UTC)