David O. McKay was born in Huntsville, Utah, and grew up there on the family farm. When he was eight, his father was called to serve as a mormon missionary in Scotland, and David was left to help his mother care for the farm as well as a younger brother and two younger sisters. He learned something about self-reliance and enterprise. By the time his father returned, the family had earned enough profit to build a much-needed addition to the home.
Young David had an unquenchable appetite for learning that seemed to foreshadow a career in education. He read and memorized passages from much of the world's great literature, and in later years his sermons and writings were filled with quotations from such literature. After graduating from the Church's Weber Stake Academy in Ogden, he became principal of the community school in Huntsville. A year later he enrolled in the University of Utah and when he graduated in June 1897 he was class president and valedictorian. At that point, he was called to serve a two-year mission for the Church in Scotland. When he returned in the fall of 1899, he accepted a teaching position at Weber Stake Academy and was appointed principal three years later.
As a teacher, he was highly popular, effective, and greatly concerned that students stretch their minds beyond the facts and into the world of ideas. It was also a teacher's responsibility, he believed, to help students develop the kind of moral and ethical values that lead to responsible citizenship. As a Church leader he once scolded the nation for not recognizing the importance of paying for outstanding teachers.
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