Richard L. Evans wrote:
We recall again the comment that the teacher is responsible for the total effect of their teaching; for their every utterance, their innuendo, has its influence on others. In furtherance of this thought, we would site a single short sentence from Henry Adams—simply said in twelve far-reaching words: “A teacher affects eternity; they can never tell where their influence stops.”108
All occupations and professions have some effect on others; but some touch lives on more intimate terms. Some professions, by their very nature, cannot escape the sobering awareness of the weight on the lives and minds and hearts of others—and their effect on the future.
For example, medical doctors, who deal with people and patients, cannot, whether they want to or not, avoid a personal responsibility for patients. They are honor bound, by privileges and knowledge and skills and traditions and ethics of their profession, to respond to calls that come to them—to save a life, to promote health, to alleviate suffering, to help people to be whole.
And the profession of teaching also is dedicated service—for it molds, in far reaching measure, the minds and spirits and lives and souls of others. A teacher does, as Henry Adams observed, affect eternity. And what they have come to call academic freedom is a sacred and sobering trust. Nor is it something that can be one-sided. Freedom is never successfully one sided. There is also freedom for pupils, and freedom for parents and the public who give the teacher their trust. And along with the right and responsibility to teach there is also the right and responsibility of the parent and public to know what is taught. (Let it also be said that no teacher has the right to teach irreverence, or irreligion, or to undermine the foundations of faith.) Indeed, there is no trust in life, public or private, for which anyone is free from accountability to others.
The Lord God gave children to parents—and he did not give parents the right to relieve themselves of their responsibility. Teaching must begin in the home long before other teachers take over—and must continue after other teachers take over. Indeed, respect for teachers themselves must first be taught in the home. Teaching is an honored profession—a sacred trust. Parenthood is an honored mission—a sacred trust; and parents cannot rightfully relieve themselves—nor can teachers—of real responsibility for their influence on the lives of others—pertaining both to time—and to eternity. ~Richard L. Evans (Salt Lake City, Publishers Press, Salt Lake City, 1966) 173-74 (language modernized) (Elder Richard L. Evans, an Apostle in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (Richard L. Evans—biography)
