by Jenny SmithIt’s the LDS seminary program’s shameful truth:
Seminary is underfunded, CES knows it, and it’s seminary students who are affected most.
Seminary remains the only youth program where the latest churchwide increase in youth budgets was not applied, perpetuating the old system of “haves” and “have nots”. CES — ever focused on its coddled Release Time Zone students and neglectful of the dedicated Outer Stake student — has set the current budget amount at $4.50/student per year. Seminary is taught approximately nine months a year in the US, and that amounts to 50 cents per student per month.
You read that right: 50 cents.
The budget problem is so widespread that in a survey I did of self-identifying seminary teachers, I determined family budgets help make up the budget shortfall in 85-95% of surveyed Seminary classes. This means your child’s experience in seminary is at least partially dependent on the disposable income of your child’s seminary teacher’s family. It’s true that there are many reasons for a student’s different experiences in seminary, but when you feel critical of your child’s seminary teacher, have you considered that *budget* could be the explanation for an apparent lack of creativity? A student who is in the class of a teacher who can afford Nerf guns and bacon is going to have a dramatically different experience from the teacher who blew their paltry classroom budget on a printer cartridge.
What’s most frustrating to me is that this system where students attend “have” or “have not” classrooms problem is entirely fixable, but CES and priesthood leadership simply won’t. I could speculate why: temple phrasing causes teachers to think they must pay to keep covenants, seminary is often a coveted calling and nobody wants to rock the boat, stake seminary is primarily taught by women whose unpaid labor is undervalued in favor of the male-dominated CES paid system, leaders who presume (female) stake teachers spend frivolously, or shame that you can’t afford the activities the previous teacher did. Regardless, stake seminary is a weird system of reverse priestcraft, where teachers must pay to play — or pay to pray, depending on one’s perspective.
2% of surveyed teachers reported they were asking for release because it was too expensive to pay for seminary out of family budgets.
An Informal Report on the Stake Seminary Budget Gap by Jenny Smith, unpublished
I admin a large Facebook Group of LDS seminary teachers, and the budget problem is a frequent cause of consternation and worry. Sadly, 2% of surveyed teachers reported they were asking for release because it was too expensive to pay for seminary out of their family’s budget. These good teachers care about the classroom experiences of their students. Why doesn’t CES?
Jenny Smith likes Star Trek, peanut M&Ms, and tomatoes — but not necessarily at the same time.
Photo by THE 5TH: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-holding-donut-179907/
6 Responses
I really appreciate this post and I wasn’t aware of this issue. It’s really well written and makes compelling points, I esp. like the reverse priestcraft point! This reminds me of how elementary school teachers have to furnish and decorate their own threadbare rooms out of their own pockets.
I’ve become really uncomfortable with the whole seminary program. Early morning is horrible for kids sleep and overall health. My kid can’t hack it. Then there’s things like getting into church schools hanging in the balance.
I was never a seminary teacher, but I paid out of pocket for young women’s activities all the time. I was super unclear on what my budget even was or how to get reimbursed or anything, so I just paid for it. (I also didn’t want to spend the church’s money if I could just afford it myself – which feels weird in retrospect with how much I was already donating in tithing and fast offerings and the fact that the church was secretly amassing such unbelievable wealth.)
I grew up with release time and paid seminary teachers. I always thought of what a huge burden a calling that big (and that early) would be on teachers and students outside of Utah.
I wasn’t aware of the budget issue (though not surprised), but I’m generally unconvinced that seminary matters and we should scrap it. I spent all of high school exhausted, and now there’s tons of research on how much sleep kids need and they cannot get it. There’s also a lot of unpaid labor in terms of getting students there.
A number of years ago, I was asked to be the seminary teacher in my stake. This would have required me to forgo any exercise in the morning, which both my dog and I needed, to be in class on time, then work 8-5, then go home and try to fit cooking, eating, spending time with my dog, any sort of workout I could do, housework and preparing for the next lesson into the evening, forget about reading a book or watching TV or doing something in the evening. I remember feeling a little disrespected—like because I don’t have kids or a husband, I have all this time that’s up for grabs, apparently. Never mind the things I do for my physical and mental health and to find joy. (I doubt anyone actually thought that. But it landed that way.) I immediately said no, they totally understood … and then they offered it to the other single woman in my ward, who worked more hours than I did.
Thank you for this. I’d never heard, though, that seminary is a coveted calling – in my stake, it’s a challenge to find anyone who will say yes to that one.
Seminary is an abomination for many reasons.
The cost to the family issue is by no means limited to seminary, but can be seen in all callings from primary through RS. Teachers simply do not get the budget they require to make classes engaging for children and youth. Curriculum materials provided by the church are a joke. Compare this to the beautifully produced activity packs provided by the church to be used alongside the lesson manuals in the 70s. It’s cost cutting gone mad. In my experience, presidencies do not always understand the burden placed on teachers in their organisation either, as there is no central requirement for teachers to be provided with packs of items such as paper, coloured pens/pencils, scissors, glue. There’s an expectation that teachers will have the necessary mobile devices or laptop to show videos, access other online material to develop their lessons. Not everyone has this. I’ve argued before, and will continue to argue that we are disenfranchising poorer members. More and more costs are being pushed onto individual members that are impossible to claim back. We’re becoming a church for the middle classes. And we’re stretching even their financial resources to run things.
This is so sad, considering the church absolutely can afford to pay all seminary teachers even those “called”, let alone reimburse. It’s shameful really.
As Primary President years back, I noted that we spend $50 per boy in scouts and $4 per girl for the year in Activity days.