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Early Mormon education reflected church attitudes stressing both practical and theological aspects of schooling. Frontier schools were usually an extension of Mormonism and directed curriculum to church ideals, attitudes, and teachings.Offensive to non-Mormon arrivals, Utah education became a battleground for the larger Mormon/ non-Mormon conflict that characterized the territory during the late nineteenth century. School desecularization demands were mounted by in creasing numbers of non-Mormons and overt Mormon influence in public schools gradually ceased. External legislative pressures further aimed at breaking Mormon territorial control by imposing severs legal penalties on polygamist Mormons and enforcing confiscation of church properties. As early as 1875, pressure against Utah's public schools had encouraged Mormon leaders to organize experimental church schools. The Edmunds-Tucker legislation of 1887 finally precipitated a full-scale movement to a Mormon school system designed to educate L. D. S. children in academia as well as Mormonism. This school system, organized in 1888, was guided by church and educational leaders alike and intended to circumvent the projected shift of territorial schools to a non-Mormon bent. Apparently well-received by church leaders, financial pressures and other legal insecurities mad school organization difficult. Competing with well-funded Protestant and public schools, the Mormon Church struggled against confiscated assets, costly court litigation, and reduced tithes. Lack of church income hindered school development and expenditures were minimal. Teachers became discouraged because of underpayment or, in many cases, nonpayment of contracted amounts. As teachers left the new church schools, replacements were difficult to find. Standards were lowered and made more subjective allowing for poorer teachers to fill L. D. S. teaching ranks. Public schools of the period simultaneously increased teaching standards and consistently paid higher wages while encouraging facility maintenance and expansion. Dependent upon membership acceptance for the new school system, leaders were disappointed in the lack of support for church schools. Overwhelmingly, Mormon parents sent their children to the established public schools that were supported bu public taxation and were still controlled by Mormon teachers and school boards. Rejection of church schools paralled the larger Mormon/non-Mormon scene of the period wherein integration and compromise were preferred to isolation and conflict. |