LDS Church Announces Details of New Educational System

[Third Hour]

President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, Elder Kim B. Clark, Elder Dallin H. Oaks and President Clark G. Gilbert attended a press conference on February 7, 2017, at 10 a.m., where it was announced that the Church Education System was going to start BYU Pathway Worldwide, according to a Mormon Newsroom livestream. The news conference was held in the Church Office Building in Salt Lake City. President Gilbert, currently the president of BYU-Idaho, will be the commissioner overseeing the BYU-Pathway Worldwide school, and this program will be located in Utah. The institution will have responsibility for all online certificate and degree programs offered by the Church Educational System. Pathway Worldwide is a new global higher-education program, and it will expand it to the Church's system of private universities. A very successful Pathway program was spearheaded by BYU-Idaho. An estimated 37,000 students are currently enrolled, with that number expected to increase greatly, President Uchtdorf said. The program will continue to be organized and conducted in LDS institutes and meetinghouses, providing an environment of faith based in the gospel of...

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[anatess2]

I wish the LDS Church would have a full K-12 program as well just like the Catholics do.

[Just_A_Guy]

38 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

I wish the LDS Church would have a full K-12 program as well just like the Catholics do.

Don't the Catholics run their schools at the diocese level, though?

[Guest MormonGator]

3 minutes ago, Just_A_Guy said:

Don't the Catholics run their schools at the diocese level, though?

Generally yes. The local schools are actually given a lot of freedom though. I went to Catholic schools from 6-12th grade

Edited February 8, 2017 by MormonGator

[anatess2]

16 minutes ago, Just_A_Guy said:

Don't the Catholics run their schools at the diocese level, though?

Actually, they don't.  There are two ways a Catholic School is started.  One way is through the Parish (which then gets approval and funding support from the Diocese).  Another way is through Catholic Orders.  They usually don't need approval from the Diocese although they do have some handshaking and the Order fund their own programs.  The Catholic Order Schools historically started when the Order opens up a Mission.  They would then start a Church in that Mission and a School to go with it.  This is like the LDS Branches.  They eventually grow and get established into a Parish and into a Diocese but the schools remain under the management of the Order.  These days, the Catholics are all over the planet that not many new Missions get opened.  But, Catholic Orders still continue to open Schools as the need arises especially in poor regions.

Therefore, management of curriculum, etc., are all done at the Parish or Order level.  In the US, the Parish Schools are more common and they are generally supported (financially and voluntarily) by the Parishioners and donors and they use the standard American curriculum used by the public school combined with Catholic religious education.   But because of the competition with Public Schools, Catholic Schools in the US started by a Parish end up to be attended by people within the Diocese (as other Parishes don't have enough students to open up their own) and become considered a Diocesan School.  In the Philippines, Catholic Order Schools are more common and they are supported by the Order and their donors.  The Orders usually have their own set curriculum slightly different from each other.  In my small town with 1 diocese during my school days, there were 3 Catholic Schools - 1 ran by the CICM Order, the other by the ICM order, and the other by the CM in cooperation with the Daughters of Charity.  We didn't have any schools then ran by a Parish.  These Catholic Schools compete with each other to attract students as most of the population - even when not Catholic - prefer to attend Catholic Schools over any other school.

Man, I can answer a one liner question with long paragraphs... I just start writing and keep going and going and going...

[Just_A_Guy]

Thanks, @anatess2 and @MormonGator, for your answers.

I guess where I was sort of going, as it pertains to the new LDS announcement and Anatess' wish that the LDS do K-12 education, is that given the centralized nature of church operations I have a hard time envisioning us developing a uniform K-12 curriculum that would pass regulatory muster in all fifty states--but then again, I don't see the CES being willing to cede to local units the prerogative to independently develop their own curricula to comply with local practice.

I also would venture to guess that with active members already tithing so faithfully and with having the bulk of that money passed on to Salt Lake--it would be pretty tough for individual wards or even stakes to scrape together additional donations on the scale required to operate a school without significant financial support from Salt Lake.

Finally--we tried primary school education in the US once (during the Utah territorial period); and the Feds worked long and hard to shut us down.  I daresay that even today, when the Church plans a new program, one of the questions they ask is "how well can we sustain this program in the face of a regulatory onslaught from a hostile government entity?"  (Remember the claims that Obama's FDA made the Church end its wet-pack canning operations because of Obama's innate hostility to private-sector charitable organizations?). K-12 education strikes me as particularly vulnerable to this sort of thing.  What with the existing traditional Church universities and an increasingly hostile academia, we may be over-exposed as it is.

Edited February 8, 2017 by Just_A_Guy