Partly in response
to the increasing secularization of the district schools and the perceived
threat posed by Protestant mission schools, the Mormon Church in the
1870s and 1880s organized a private secondary school system. However,
because of economic exigencies, by 1933 the LDS Church had discontinued
its support of private secondary schools in Utah, turning some of them
over to the state for a nominal fee. Public secondary schools were made
more acceptable to the Mormons because of the organization in about
1912 of a parallel released-time program funded entirely by the LDS
Church which allowed Mormon students to integrate religious education
with their public school studies through attendance at LDS seminaries
built adjacent to high schools. Although most Utah school districts
gave students graduation credits for attendance at seminary classes,
a 1981 Federal court ruling disallowed such credit as being unconstitutional,
while upholding the constitutionality of the released-time program.
Education in
the nineteenth-century Utah was shaped in part by the conflicts between
Mormons and non-Mormons. During the twentieth century, however, it is
just as evident that it has been shaped less by local circumstances
than by the national social, economic and political environment and
mirrors very closely national educational issues. For example, the demands
for a business-like approach to the management of the burgeoning school
systems led to demands for more efficiency in the management of tax-money.
This in turn led to demands for consolidation and centralization of
schools--two movements which typified the early twentieth century and
for which Utah was praised nationally. Utah's response during the Progressive
era gained it national attention and its concern for the welfare of
children in and out of school was described by one national historian
as "social uplift with a vengeance." In the late 1930s there was a national
trend toward increased state funding of education, and once again Utah
shared in this movement to improve the economic lot of teachers.
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