Lot’s of recent studies show that teenagers need more sleep, and that one way to help that is to start school later. California became the first state in the nation to require that high schools can start no earlier than 8:30 am beginning in 2 years.
I’m a product of four years of early morning seminary in the central valley of California. We had 6:00 am seminary. To make matters worse for me, I had an early morning paper route (yes, I’m that old) for two years, that required me to get up at 4:45 am three mornings a week. I then played a varsity sport after school, so I was pretty dead tired by 7 pm every night. I remember missing YM weekly meetings because I was too tired, or had too much homework.
I wonder if the CES leaders, or their bosses (Q15) have discussed these studies, and the affect early morning seminary might be having on the well being of the students. Since all these leaders live in Utah, where they have release time seminary, its probably is not high on their radar as they don’t have kids or grand-kids complaining about the early hours.
I’m not sure how this will affect early morning seminary here in the state. If school starts at 8:30, there is really no need for seminary to start at 6:00 am like it does in my stake. It could start at 7 am. The problem might be getting teachers that have a 8:00 am job they have to get to.
Interesting that even the Deseret News published a story referencing the studies that show kids need more sleep and school should start later, but failed to mention that the church outside of the Mormon Corridor makes kids get up at 5:30 am or earlier to get to 6 am seminary.
There is a CES director in our ward here in California, and I asked him if he had heard anything from headquarters on how they might handle a late school start. He said he has heard nothing, but with all the changes in the church surrounding “home centered teaching” that maybe there would be no need for year morning seminary in a few years.
What are your experiences with yearly morning seminary, either as a student, or parent driving kids at 5:30 in the morning?
Wheat & Tares 
My kids did online. At the time it was great because they could complete the lessons at a time convenient to them and us as a family, which was generally as soon as they got in from school.
I’ve since heard that after my kids graduated, that online lessons in our area were made “live” in the early morning. A big step back, and a slap in the face for families in my opinion. CES really hate relinquishing any kind of control, and would appear to have been clawing it however they can.
I can hope that perhaps with the New curriculum next year, and the home centred emphasis that my change,. Either way I’m glad it no longer affects my family directly.
The church likes early morning seminary because it is a difficult experience that entrenches youth in the church at an early age. You’re more likely to be committed to something if you’ve had to sacrifice for it.
In a sort of indirect defense of early morning seminary, BYU published a study on sleep habits and test scores and found that 16-year-olds who slept just 7 hours a night tested the best. And then went onto claim that 7 hours of sleep was ideal for 16-yos. I believe the study was done in 2012, but it keeps getting refeatured in LDS-related publications. I’m deeply suspicious of the study for a couple of reasons. 1) It is an outlier among sleep studies that generally show teens needing 8.5-10 hours of sleep per night. 2) It appears to draw a premature correlation between sleep hours and test scores. It doesn’t factor in the likelihood that terms who slept 7 hours a night tended to come from upper middle class families that were more structured and had high expectations on them. Yet this study is used as an excuse to keep early morning seminary intact.
All in all I favor a restructuring of seminary to be more favorable to teen sleep. I know for sure that my kids will never do early morning seminary. I can’t imagine any teen electing to do early morning seminary out of their own free will and choice.
Seminary is pretty much required to go to BYU so deciding not to do early morning seminary means my kids won’t attend. Ours starts at 6 AM four days a week and we have to leave our house at 5:30 to get there. Either she drives with another teen with a car or I drive here there and back. It was just such a terrible start to the day. So we stopped.
I teach it this year (and 14 years ago too); we start at 6:30 am. only 2 students show up that early, the rest trickle in at 6:45. It’s over at 7:15. IDK it’s a scripture song and a prayer NOT from family. It reinforces and nourishes a shield of faith all people need. I’m thinking our primary kids could use it too!
I had to get up by 4:45 to get ready for my day and drive to early morning seminary across town. I remember falling asleep in a lot of my high school classes. It was impossible to get enough sleep during those years, and I know that my schooling suffered because of it.
I have never had to do early morning seminary, but I did do really morning jazz band before school at maybe 6:30 am and release time seminary during the school day.
My experience with early morning class, although I didn’t realize it at the time, was that it made my other classes harder. I frequently had trouble staying awake during classes right after lunch.
My experience with seminary was double edged. Seminary got me reading the scriptures, understanding a lot more of the doctrine, and it was a pleasant break from school. But it was also the biggest source of folk-doctrine in my life. A lot of questionable stuff, including racist notions and anti-science dogma was spread in seminary. I often wonder if it is still the same.
Early morning seminary is one of my pet peeves. Not a fan. I’ve had three teenagers go through it and we’ve always told them it was optional. Two of the three seemed to somewhat like it, and one of their seminary teacher was a huge influence for good on my oldest’s difficult high school years. My youngest hates it and won’t go and we don’t force him.
My stake doesn’t offer online seminary or Sunday only seminary which used to be a thing but my stake president told me it’s not a thing any more which I think is a euphemism for “we want only early morning seminary.”
My two main reasons for disliking seminary are basically 1) teenagers need more sleep 2) think how much calculus they could study with an extra hour every day. And a third reason is that seminary teachers in my area seem to be bottom of the barrel, black and white thinkers.
My kids currently have seminary over Skype every morning (we live in Turkey). Still too early at 06:00, but at least there is no driving anywhere.
I had early morning seminary for three years in central Illinois. That was easily one of the worst church experiences I have ever had. Half the class showed up in pajamas and brought sleeping bags or else actively disrupted the class (think “the hulk” with actual ripping off of shirts). The teachers were unwilling to enforce any rules because “we are excited that they are coming!” I quit after three years and started home-study once a week seminary because of school speech, debate, and music commitments that I created specifically in order to get out of early-morning seminary. My bishop was extremely unhappy with me for not having enough commitment. Considering that his son was one of the worst offenders, I didn’t fell bad telling him (politely) to jump in the lake.
The most aggravating factor about seminary then and now is the lack of a good curriculum. The students are expected to proof-text and concentrate on feelings rather than really studying the material. The Gospels this year are done sequentially, so that all of the parallel passages in Matthew, Mark, and Luke are repeated and then John is done 2 chapters a day. That gives roughly 2.5 weeks for John, and the majority of that time is on doctrinal (scripture) mastery. Ughh!! I wish that there would be a curriculum that really gets into the scriptures.
BTW, i really appreciate this blog. Thank you for putting these questions out every week!
I remember having to wake up in the dark to get to seminary before high school’s surf class. Our teacher, Bro. Z, was kind and casual and always expressed his love for us. Looking back, his expression of love for all the students in the class was perhaps the strongest stabilizing force in some of our daily experience. And for this reason alone, early-morning seminary was a good thing.
My concern is more about seminary curriculum. I don’t think “Come Follow Me” is adequate for the new generation. The lesson plan suggestions, and themes emphasized, are sometimes out-of-context, and seem to be aimed at preserving institutional beliefs more than teaching gospel. I foresee this backfiring as youth will take institutional beliefs as “gospel,” and find themselves in a quagmire when they eventually learn that a lot of current teaching isn’t gospel truth.
One of the techniques cults use to indoctrinate is sleep deprivation. I’m not saying that’s the church’s intent with seminary but it’s an inconvenient fact that seems inescapable to me. People here have been complaining for at least a decade about this onerous requirement but kids are still driving — sometimes on snowy, hazardous roads — with minimal sleep.
It’s a problem in need of a solution. Who — apart from concerned parents who can’t change policies and demands — is doing anything about it?
I attended the church college of New Zealand, and we had seminary during school hours. It was great.
Since CCNZ closed, I’ve had brothers and sisters attend early ward seminary classes, or later classes ar school just before school, or home-study.
It seems like there is a lot of flexibility, but at a local level, it might depend on who is in charge. I stopped attending institute after I started grad studies, married, and my wife became pregnant. I still wanted to ‘graduate’ institute so I talked to my local institute director. We couldn’t settle on anything that would work for him. When a new director appeared a year or so later, I approached him with my situation. He was much more flexible and supportive. I did home-institute, and reported via email. Soon enough, I graduated.
I suspect early morning seminary is why my oldest daughter left the church. It was done at great sacrifice, but because of one girl who took pride in being as destructive as possible, she got nothing out of it. Several of the other parents were concerned because their child was also complaining about getting nothing out of seminary because of this one girls disruption. We parents approached the bishop to see what could be done for better discipline in class and he kind of shrugged and said the only thing they had not tried was kicking her out of seminary, and they refused to even think about that because it would offend her father. Said father was a world famous heart surgeon and as such a big, big tithe payer. So essentially the church was willing to offend every child in that class to avoid offending the cash cow. Yeah, I told the bishop what I thought (well, I didn’t SAY “cash cow”) and he shrugged in acknowledgement as if the money was worth more than 20 children’s souls to him also.
But my daughter lost all interest and respect for all things church related that year and refused to return to early morning seminary and we had to fight her to even hold FHE, let alone get her inside the church building. She never has returned to church and it has been 30 years.
I suspect if it had not been something she had to get up at 5:00 am to get to, she could have forgiven the whole thing. But, the church uses “great sacrifice” to tie people to the church, but they forget the psychology behind sacrifice that when the great sacrifice is for naught, it causes great resentment.
I tried to write disruptive, but spell check had other plans. Well, destructive works too. The girl would destroy other students property in order to disrupt class.
My two older sisters attended early morning seminary in New Hampshire. I’ll have to see what they thought of that but early morning seminary was the only option for them and they had a close relationship with the teacher, who was also a high school teacher at their school. They seemed to enjoy it.
I got lucky and moved to Utah for released time seminary. I am not an early morning person and was grateful I didn’t attend early morning seminary.
Even though we live in Utah county, my son attends early morning by choice. Students who attend early morning often want to graduate from high school early. The Bishop’s son has a September birthday and attends early morning. He wants to skip his senior year of high school and go in a mission the moment he turns 18. I think my son had a similar idea but I recommended he take college classes during his senior year because of the cost savings. I think he has decided to do that. (I attended college my senior year of high school, even with released time seminary.)
So yes there are students in Utah who choose early morning seminary. My son had perfect attendance his freshman year. He is on the cross country, swim, and track teams and has only missed to attend athletic competitions.
Personally I don’t understand his choice for early morning seminary. I wouldn’t, and didn’t choose that. We don’t wake him up and he goes without complaint. I’ve even encouraged him not to attend early morning but it is something he chooses. Like his mom, he is an early morning person.
Rick B’s comment is interesting… I probably would have chosen early morning seminary it it were an option where I lived. I mentioned in my earlier comment that I did early morning jazz band, but that was only one third of the year. I would likely have done early morning seminary during the other two trimesters for at least one year in order to do so additional year of debate. I didn’t have time to do all the extracurriculars I wanted. Still, sleep deprivation would have impacted me.
Our two oldest children did early morning seminary, getting up at 4:45 am to be there at 5:30 am. (With busing, they need to be done by 6:20 to be at school by 7 am.) Sadly, a few years ago, our school district asked parents if they wanted high school to start later, and majority of parents voted no since many kids had sports programs or jobs after school.
The seminary teachers in our ward were good, and out kids seemed to enjoy it, but it was definitely highly disruptive of good sleep. Our kids were always tired and spent most of weekends sleeping to try to recover. Don’t know if this definitely contributed to some of the emotional difficulties they experienced, but it seemed like it. Both left the church once they went to college, so didn’t seem like the “sacrifice” was helpful for building trust in church
Our youngest child who currently attends high school asked not to go after trying two weeks because it was hard for them to get up and we agreed. Life is better for all of us now.
HATED IT! I did early morning here in Canada. I felt bad for the teachers, they had to be there. One teacher was disfellowshipped for a year, and then the brought her back!!! she was and still is crazy-now she is the Stake RS President. I had to unlearn what she taught me. I think it had short term benefits but now over 20 years later I remember what I had to unlearn.
My three attended early morning seminary—2 oldest on the east coast, youngest on the west coast. Winters were tough in the east. Windy roads through the woods, 20-30 min each way drive. (I never understood why they wouldn’t offer the option of online seminary). But the teacher was great. And yeah, seminary would get cancelled during bad weather.
West coast was the worst experience. Authoritarian leadership in our area. My son missed few days—- but didn’t graduate. Why? They had a policy of counting minutes late and required make-up work for those minutes. So, if you were 5 mins late everyday, in a week you would need to do 25 mins of make-up work. Senior year he drove out of his way to 2 different houses to give rides to other students. So yeah, he was late everyday. Didn’t want to do the make-up work. Seminary graduation denied.
He should’ve/could’ve just gotten an extra hour or 2 of sleep.
(When I young, growing up in SLC, I was denied my seminary graduation because I had to work the night of seminary graduation and couldn’t attend. My mother tried to get it for me and they refused to give it to her).
I didn’t mind it so much in Kentucky in the 80s. School started at 830 and seminary went from 715-800 and then we walked to school. The instruction wasn’t the best and I recall a lot of those silly “Free to Choose” filmstrip videos. But it created a sense of comraderie among the dozen or so LDS at our school. I don’t think I could have handled it if it were earlier.
I’m a stake-called early-morning seminary teacher in Utah (yes, some private/charter schools have different situations here), and when we switched to a school start time of 8:30 they moved seminary back to 7:15 (we meet for an hour four days a week). So hopefully the California school/seminary schedule will also work that out.
Just to correct a couple misunderstandings above:
@Rockwell–your experience all depends on the teacher, I suppose, like every church class, but that’s not how the manual is structured and we are specifically counseled to avoid various folk-doctrines etc as they come up.
@Andrew– the teachers have the option on how to teach the gospels and I didn’t like the sequential approach last time, so we harmonized the synoptics and have spent the past month alone just on John, which has been wonderful. You could suggest doing that to your local teachers in four years.
@Travis–Come Follow Me is not the seminary curriculum, we have scripture-based manuals (you can access them in the Gospel Library). Unfortunately I’ve found that general scripture knowledge is so lacking in my students that we have to start at the basics. If every family did a better job of studying and teaching at home, you could actually have a deeper learning and teaching experience in the classroom.
My kids all did early morning and had to get up between 4:30 and 4:45. Two of them started drinking their mom’s diet coke right when they woke up. I discouraged that, but to no avail. And each of them was in at least 1 if not 2 extra curricular activities like sports and/or band. They were all way too busy in high school.
I know I was sleepy throughout all of high school and we had seminary that started later as high school started a bit later back in the old days.
If you watch the documentary, “sleepless in America”, you will probably come away thinking, “We really need to stop doing early morning seminary.” I sure did.
It was quite a miracle, but my family managed early morning scripture study each morning for the better part of 4 or 5 years. When early morning seminary was introduced though, that family time went out the window. oops.
Those were definitely some sleepy years though.
I’ve been reading the same posts and comments about early morning seminary since the Bloggernacle started.
https://www.timesandseasons.org/harchive/2013/09/its-time-to-change-early-morning-seminary/
If the costs outweigh the benefits for most LDS youth, why does it continue? Because there is a very powerful institutional sponsor, CES (or whatever their new official name is). CES employs thousands, has a big budget and lots of buildings, and has almost limitless institutional support from General Authorities. While it would be an exaggeration to say that for CES people the program is more important than the students … it wouldn’t be much of an exaggeration.
Honestly, you could just 100% cancel all LDS seminary and most students would be better off. They get plenty of teaching on Sundays.
Our ward in Seattle has two school districts that have different start times. The kids in the later starting district opted to still keep coming at the earlier time so that all the kids can still be together. They have about an hour after seminary before school starts. I definitely complain more than my kids about the early start time. They have wonderful teachers and great attitudes!
Brian G: you made the single most important point about LDS Seminary…if your kid wants to attend BYU, seminary is basically mandatory. And the issue goes much deeper than attendance. BYU applicants must secure a letter of recommendation from their seminary teacher. And this letter is apparently just as important, if not more important, than other recommendations.
As the parent of 3 kids who graduated from seminary and a 4th currently attending, I find this recommendation to be completely misplaced. My kids had decent relationships with some of their seminary teachers. And my kids hardly knew some of their other teachers. The idea that these teachers would have ANY influence over my kids’ BYU acceptance is really just a foolish tradition. Or, it speaks to what BYU values in its students which is hardly normal for a real college.
I did 4 years of early morning seminary (west coast, late 1990s). I didn’t care for it then, and I don’t care for it now, especially as my oldest gets closer to high school age. All of the emerging research about teens needing more sleep is vindicating (I was right, Mom and Dad!) but also frustratingly too late for me. In retrospect, I was a droopy-eyed zombie for most of my time in high school, and my sub-stellar academic performance stands as evidence of that.
My parents manipulated me into going, as I’m sure everyone else’s parents did (I can’t think of any classmate who attended of his or her own complete free will). One popular approach back then was to make seminary attendance a condition of keeping driving privileges– “Oh, you don’t feel like going to seminary, son? Well I don’t ‘feel like’ keeping you on the insurance policy…” was a common conversation in my house that was quickly followed by apology and capitulation. The actual content of seminary was a mixed bag, as they were all unpaid volunteers, and there wasn’t much intellectual depth in the material. Some were genuine and caring, while others were duds, and one was a bit too authoritarian and rules-oriented.
To be fair, my parents were being manipulated, too. Stake leadership pushed seminary hard, practically elevating it to a saving ordinance. They openly promised that students who diligently attended seminary performed better in their secular studies and life in general, had an additional layer of spiritual protection from the slings and arrows of The World, etc. They had no evidence to support this claim, just some anecdotes about a kid from a neighboring stake a few years earlier who had perfect seminary attendance and got a BYU presidential scholarship. But this was at a time when the internet was new and people didn’t question anything the stake president said.
Perhaps I got some benefit from spending my early mornings studying deeply from the scriptures during those impressionable years. But in hindsight, I believe would have gotten a much greater benefit from an extra hour or two of sleep every night.
By contrast, my wife grew up in Utah and did release time seminary. According to her, the atmosphere was very casual, and most students there were eager and looked forward to the seminary period as a welcome break from their secular classes. Even several non-LDS students attended seminary for social reasons and to get a break from school. She looks back on her seminary experience fondly. If this is the view of seminary that most Church leaders have, then I doubt they will do anything to change the program. But when the time comes for my children to start high school, I will let them make their own informed decisions as to what works best for them, and fully support it either way.
Jack, y our comment about your parents twisting your arm to go to seminary reminded me that my parents were so tired from having kids that it was really up to me . I had to get myself up, I had to make my own breakfast and pack my own lunch. And I didn’t miss a day for 3.5 years (sometimes I was late and today they would count it as an absence) . I did it because at the time I felt like it was what God wanted me to do – no matter the sacrifice . Yes it contributed to not so great grades. But it was easier to get into college back a few decades ago. And lo and behold, my grades went up dramatically when I went to college which is not the norm. But then again there was no functioning institute at my college. There was an institute teacher that tried to get it started but there were only 2 people that showed up and the guy seemed to want to talk about how some ancients like to create and worship phallic statutes. I was too busy trying to make enough money to survive and complete my degrees. I never went back.
My current stake contains a large public university on the west coast. The stake president is also the institute director (which I think is a huge conflict of interest, but that’s a discussion for another day). He also teaches 1 period of release time seminary for students at the local high school, which conveniently has an adjacent LDS meetinghouse. It took years of negotiation with the school administration for him to implement this release time program. In order to participate, students have to jump through hoops to meet their academic obligations, by either giving up an elective each semester or making up the lost credit in summer school (or some combination of the two). In stake conferences and other meetings, he frequently trumpets the “honorable sacrifice” these students make for seminary. Early morning seminary is also offered. To me, neither one looks like an attractive option.
I guess what bothers me about the whole thing is the way they promote seminary with the same “sacrifice brings blessings” rhetoric that I received as a young man. Decades later were are still stuck on the Vending Machine Gospel, which I wholeheartedly reject as false doctrine.
Josh H – I think that moving the recommendation away from bishops to the Seminary teacher is a retrenchment by CES, but I think the writing is on the wall. My kids will go to another school than BYU and I guess I that is OK.
I treated my body and health like trash in high school with 6am seminary and late night theater and music rehearsals that often went to 11-12pm. With homework, I got about 4-5 hours of sleep during school nights. I remember being so groggy in the mornings- I probably shouldn’t have been driving- sleep deprecation is similar to intoxication on the road. It angers me today to think about how teachers, church, and parents allowed that to happen. I’m angry at myself as well.
No one has mentioned the research on poor sleep patterns and lifelong obesity. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Not sleeping hurts your immune system, tanks your ability to focus, to be athletic, and messes with your metabolism.
Our ward petitioned the school for release time, but was turned down. Several families petitioned for after-school (3-4pm) seminary, but that’s when sports occur so that was shot down. Sadly, there were enough kids who did music/theater and didn’t do sports to have an after-school seminary as well as a morning seminary. Seminary teachers and parents were the ones who couldn’t be inconvenienced at that time.
The church could use lunch time. Kids could bring brown bags to seminary although I don’t know how to account for students on government subsidized school lunches.
There really aren’t many options.
It might help if seminary was given as an advanced-placement college credit. Some schools outside of the church system would take the credit, high schools might take it then as an elective as well. There’s got to be a better solution.
Why would a high school or college outside the influence of the church ever credit a student for seminary? It might be valuable to a BYU or a parent hoping for low tuition but I do you really think you’d find an accredited non-church-affiliated school that would take seminary seriously as an academic pursuit?
There might be comparative or world religion classes that would pass muster as an elective but a program that’s been designed by one particular religion to meet it’s ownself-serving criteria just isn’t going to be taken seriously outside the Mormon community.
Why does the institution ask 14 year old to wake up at 4:45 AM, but the 18 year old missionaries have to get up by 6:30 AM. Both should be asleep. both the seminary and the mission system are broken. But at least missionaries get to sleep to 630 AM.
I no longer attend church and the start of the end was the hypocrisy of the LDS seminary program. They honor and love their programs and rule more than people. The church I wanted to be a part of thought people were more important than programs. The church used to teach that !
The LDS church is a cult and this is another fruit of its system.
One of my kids was not accepted into BYU with a 4.0 GPA and 32 ACT, all over early/ super early seminary in our area., 5:30.
If the GA grand-kids in the Mormon corridor had to live under this system it would change……..it is SOOOOO broken. How do they not see that ??? They are so blind and hard hearted.
By the time SLC wakes up, many more members and their children will leave the church.
A characteristic of a cult is a group that has stringent rules, that the decision makers themselves do not follow.
I could go on for hours about this topic, it hit a nerve and caused me pain and harm.
Good Bye—Mormon Church and I pray my kids wake up so my grand-kids to not have to deal with this silliness.
One example of hundreds i could share.
If the.kids arrive late…past 530 am…they had to wait in the hallway while the door to the classroom was shut. Had to wait until prayer was said and hymn sung. Then they could come in to join the class. So 1 minute late..miss 10 more minutes.
Then the kids would speed in their cars to get to the church on time. My neighbors started to ask why mormons drive so fast to get to church. Several near accidents. Asked police to set up radar traps.
The mormon policies are so misguided. They really do not live in reality.
I warned the SP there was going to be a tragic accident….but he ignored me.
The real tragedy is the cost of families fighting over getting kids out of bed. The program is a joke. There is NO learning. Its a program without substance.
God is sad over how mormons abuse his name and how they treat others…especially their own.
I was extremely privileged and grew up on home study with weekly Sunday classes in the UK, which established a life-long relationship with scripture and spiritual self-reliance, as well as the support of a wonderful teacher and classmates that have been friends and supporters throughout my life. It was also inescapable if I attended church, and established positive peer pressure.
Fast forward to my kids experience of early morning seminary, which was catastrophic, becoming an ‘ in-or-out’ experience, where those who attended belonged to the group and those who didn’t had no other way in. Many had transport problems, or problems managing the time pressures because they took sports or music, or indeed any other interest that required extra discipline and time. Those with sickness in the family or even a baby that required parents be up at night or a parent working away or a lone parent or, or, or…anything a little different.
So in our family during seminary, we had a long term sick parent, the other parent working out of town, new baby and a long term sick child. One of our kids struggled on for a year, another two were faced with a program that was inflexible and so excluded them – online was a fixed time and inaccessible the rest of the day as it could have been to opt kids in. And seminary was held in the homes of kids where most teenaged kids lived. They were the only ones who had good experiences, worked well for them, not so much for the kids who had to get there, car ownership amongst the 16+ in the UK being very low. Although, their parents almost all split around and a little after that time.I do put that down to the pressure that seminary placed on their marriages.
Consequences for us are two inactive kids who feel they failed, and it wrought havoc on family life in the process. We went from a family just holding on by the skin of our teeth to a family in meltdown. And those mornings wreck your sex life and so endanger the family further. Probably what happened to the others.
You could look around the ward on a Sunday and tell which kids were going to make it through seminary and those who weren’t. And when they didn’t, they were so isolated and sidelined that they ceased to attend church. That can’t be right.
Seems to me easy to create a system that opts our youth in. Sunday classes and home study.
I loved seminary, but it was not a blessing to our family. Very few felt it’s benefits, many paid a high price.
Alice, I think it would be possible to adapt seminary for college credits that would be accepted by the church’s university’s and potentially other Christian colleges or parochial systems. That being said, most universities don’t accept BYU’s religious credits when people transfer to mainstream universities.
It would be possible to explore high school credit in various areas if we were flexible enough to adapt. We’d need to call qualified and trained teachers (many wards have licensed teachers or professors and most CES employees qualify). We’d also need to have more assessment and approach the content differently. NT and OT years could potentially include more history, literature and/or philosophy. The D&C year could potentially lean into American History. It’s a long shot, but has anyone explored the possibility? Granted, I can see it working in some school districts, not in others. If wards/stakes were free to pursue it and the CES system were supportive I can see it happening in pockets.
Memories…1969, 1970, 1971…highly motivated to attend early morning seminary. In Las Vegas. If we had 80 % attendance, we boarded the 4am bus to Disneyland once a year. Three or four big buses. It worked! I graduated a semester early and did not make my four year. I do, however, have a certificate of achievement! My teachers were all high school teachers…bless their hearts! And my mom!
Sorry Ally, glad you’re happy but I did it because I believed it. interestingly, maybe you did and do too. Hm.
Mortimer, trying to get some kind of legitimate academic credit for seminary is a fool’s errand. Seminary is basically Sunday School on weekday mornings, in most cases taught by friendly neighborhood ward member volunteers without any academic credentials. And even if you had qualified, credentialed teachers, the material does not meet any recognized academic criteria. Asking for secular recognition also blurs lines between church and state, which may work in certain pockets of Utah but not anywhere else in the U.S.
Stop pretending that the CES is a legitimate educational institution deserving of recognition, because it is not.
Nobody has mentioned how this early morning dis-proportionally affects girls. Most high school girls in the US wear makeup. The amount certainly varies, but that can mean that the girls have to get up even earlier to apply makeup. Most guys at this age shower and spend just a few minutes getting their hair moving generally in the desired direction on their head.
Jack Hughes,
The criterion set by accrediting bodies could be a goal for CES to work toward, standards and benchmarks for quality could help elevate the status quo, if used as even a stretch goal. At the same time, I’m a proponent of non-traditional educational models and think that there are legitimate reasons for not conforming to boiler-plate educational forms that struggle to move away from entrenched faults.
CES has run accredited LDS Secondary schools abroad (New Zealand) as well as BYU-High, and can accredit content for itself. Its just a thought.
I think there are arguments for and against religious instruction receiving state-sanctioned credit. There are also legal precedents for parents/churches winning the right for release time, homeschooling, parochial instruction, etc.
A much easier and more workable solution would be to eliminate seminary completely. Or at least replace it with a self-paced DIY online version in the spirit of Come Follow Me, so that the folks who really care about things like BYU admission will have it available, while the rest of us can ignore it.
Pres. Nelson has already made it clear that there are no more sacred cows, so this is not an unrealistic possibility at all.
Wayfarer, like you I enjoyed my three years home study in the uk, though we had weekly classes an hour before youth activities, not Sundays. My final year there was only an early morning option. I’ve mentioned on many posts on the topic that I learnt nothing that year. I graduated but really I was so disillusioned with CES that when clearing through all my stuff before I married I threw out all my seminary certificates, including the graduation certificate.
Where in the UK are you that they time limited the online classes so tightly? Until the last year or so when they went live, the online classes in my part of the UK were open from early morning until 10pm, though my kids generally completed them between 4 and 5pm. And lessons were reopened during half term holidays in case kids needed to catch up any they’d missed. So it was sufficiently flexible for us at the time. But in my view not as good as the old home study, being too directed.
But your story serves to reinforce my belief that CES are basically control freaks. And yes, my experience as youth Sunday school teacher before online was an option was that the early morning seminary kids were a clique and the other kids left on the margins. That was heartbreaking. Early morning not only strains the marriages of student’s parents but the teachers as well, in my observation.
I was absolutely adamant that my kids would not do early morning. If there hadn’t been a suitable online option then they wouldn’t have done it. And actually they were very lucky. My son was allowed to join the new trial online class for the stake because of his ASD diagnosis. My daughter joined two years later when the class was more established. It was the year after she graduated that online classes went “live” early morning. I wouldn’t have supported that, far too much of an intrusion into family life.
“NT and OT years could potentially include more history, literature and/or philosophy. The D&C year could potentially lean into American History.”
I can’t imagine the church leaders wanting to move CES in that direction. If anything, the leaders seem to want to move away from focus on historical context. Sure they’ll provide a little bit of highly sanitized historical context to satisfy the curious, but mostly they want the focus to be on individual loyalty to the church. If you try to contextualize the scriptures too much or situate them within larger academic fields, the worry is that a select few seminary students might start asking too many questions or that at worst they’ll point out that the emperor has no clothes. The scriptures are supposed to be mysterious, holy texts that the lay person cannot fully comprehend but can lift feel-good snippets out of, and also derive a strong sense of guilt out of. Make members feel very guilty about everything and then sell them the elixir. That’s how the church has long operated. Plus, it would be pretty hard to find enough people adequately trained in history, literature, and philosophy to teach seminary this way. The CES training is also loyalty-based, not academic-based. CES instructors are strongly discouraged from formulating their own philosophies and injecting them into their instruction. They are told to just teach from the manual.
BYU instruction is more towards an attempted integration of larger academic fields with LDS-specific teachings that you speak of. While the professors have certified professional training largely at secular institutions, there is a strong loyalty culture at BYU that browbeats them into thinking twice about saying anything that could be construed as disloyal to the church. The professors are under close surveillance. If the administration hears student complaints about a professor saying something that is appears to challenge the official narrative, they come under threat of losing their job.
In the European country where I live early morning seminary ran from 6:30 am to 7:15 am twice a week (Mo-Tu) from our home because we had the good geographical fortune to live most centrally of the participants. Another session was Wednesday before the youth activity and another was Thurs. evening. Fridays were off. My oldest daughter attended and enjoyed it. My sons did not attend. My next daughter attended sporadically. Both my wife and I were teachers at some point. Now seminary is mostly self directed with parents’ support, or in small Skype groups before school. If you make any reasonable effort, you pass. Our ward / stake really tries to put the kids before the program and do all they can to help them succeed.
I grew up in Utah Valley and attended two years of release time and two years of voluntary early morning so I could take more classes. Yes I was an over-achiever. But early morning only started at 7am and I carpooled with friends who lived close by, so it was fun. All four years I had great teachers who were humble, funny, didn’t teach anything wacky that I can recall, and involved in our lives.
So I have had a positive view on seminary, and still believe it can be beneficial if done right, but totally appreciate hearing about the more negative experiences others have had. So unfortunate. I agree the church needs to make adjustments to benefit those who can’t do release time.
Jack Hughes, I concede- the more we explore it, the more complicated any type of accreditation or revision gets.
But, I have to say I’m saddened at the thought of simply going online for instruction. First, I think this eroded the concept of community. Second, asynchronous instruction is not an appropriate format for long-term study, all concepts, and all situations. Third, students without LDS families (or knowledgeable parents) and support are disadvantaged. And lastly, kids just don’t need another hour of homework each night. It doesn’t solve the problem that we are over-burdening kids with too much stuff.
When our oldest started HS, our Seattle area stake discontinued online seminary because “so many students struggled to get the assignments done” and consolidated the earlier class with the later class so that my daughter wouldn’t be able to catch her bus to school. No other kids were going from the church to her school. They also moved from the church by the poor school to the church by the rich school. Eventually we were offered online seminary through a neighboring stake, but she would have to go to an in-person class at least once a week with all the online students that was in a different town, during work hours for me, and band/sports practice for her. She isn’t doing seminary for the second year.
My next child starts HS next year. We’re not even bothering to have the discussion.
We don’t even bother with seminary for our children anymore (Europe). It doesn’t coincide with the distances, school hours etc. I think good sleep is more important for my kids then what seminary over here has to offer. Big plus is they don’t need it to get into any college/university!