Quotes from LDS Authorities and Educational Experts

What, then, is true education? It is awakening a love for truth, a just sense of duty, opening the eyes of the soul to the great purpose and end of life. It is not teaching the individual to love the good for personal sake, it is to teach him to love the good for the sake of the good itself; to be virtuous in action because he is so in heart; to love and serve God supremely, not from fear, but from delight in His perfect character.
Instructor, August 1961, p. 253
Yes, mothers, teach your children the gospel in your home, at your own fireside. This is the most effective teaching that your children will ever receive. This is the Lord’s way of teaching. The Church cannot teach like you can. The school cannot. The day-care center cannot. But you can, and the Lord will sustain you. Your children will remember your teachings forever, and when they are old, they will not depart from them. They will call you blessed--their truly angel mother. Mothers, this kind of heavenly, motherly teaching takes time--lots of time. It cannot be done effectively part-time. It must be done all the time in order to save and exalt your children. This is your divine calling.
"To the Mothers in Zion" Feb. 1987
The problem in our country isn't with books being banned, but with people no longer reading. You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
Farenheit 451
"What about socialization?" is a perennial question asked of homeschool parents and children. Several researchers have approached the "socialization?" question in different ways. For example, they have evaluated the self-concept and self-esteem of the homeschooled, observed them in social interactions with others, and documented the social activities in which they engage. To date, researchers have found that the home educated are doing well in terms of their social, emotional, and psychological development. In cases in which research has found differences, the home-educated are typically doing better than those in institutional public schools.
National Home Education Research Institute
Mothers who know do less. They permit less of what will not bear good fruit eternally. They allow less media in their homes, less distraction, less activity that draws their children away from their home. Mothers who know are willing to live on less and consume less of the world’s goods in order to spend more time with their children—more time eating together, more time working together, more time reading together, more time talking, laughing, singing, and exemplifying. These mothers choose carefully and do not try to choose it all.
"Mothers Who Know" Ensign, November 2007
If I had to make a general rule for living and working with children, it might be this: be wary of saying or doing anything to a child that you would not do to another adult, whose good opinion and affection you valued.
Freedom and Beyond, p. 51
Adam spent much effort being the school teacher for his children. He and Eve taught their sons and daughters. He taught them the gospel in their home evenings, and he taught them reading and writing and arithmetic. And they kept their books of remembrance.
Ensign, Dec. 1980, p. 60
Parents should not leave the training of children to others. There seems to be a growing tendency to shift this responsibility from the home to outside influences such as the school and the church and of a greater concern, to various child care agencies and institutions… Constant training, constant vigilance, companionship, and being watchmen of our own children are necessary in order to keep our homes intact and to bless our children in the Lord's own way. The Doctrine and Covenants makes it very clear. It is the responsibility of the parents to teach their children. All other agencies are secondary. If parents do not teach their children - THEIR children - they will be held responsible.
Ensign, May 1979, p.5
I think that by the end of the millennium, for those who will occupy the celestial kingdom, the home will be the only media of teaching children. Teaching will be through the family. You may note that Jeremiah said that the time will come when no man will teach his neighbor. To me this means the teachings will come fundamentally through the unit of the family. But I think there will be central places where instruction will go forth, directed to the family level. Thus there will no doubt be sources of information for the family. It will be the father and the father's father who will be doing the teaching. In ancient times the fathers were the Instructors, meaning the patriarchal fathers--it will be the same during the millennium. Education... Law of Consecration, BYU Studies, Autumn 1969
Education... Law of Consecration, BYU Studies, Autumn 1969
Seeing children go to school for the first day - or on any other - is ... sobering. They leave in part the love of home, the influence of the family, for the intermingling of many, to enter a new venture from which there is no complete returning at any time. They are taught in many ways by many teachers, taught much that is true, much that proves to be tentative. They are exposed to many impressions, many opinions, many personalities, and give up by degrees some elements of child-like innocence and acquire by degrees some elements of sophistication - moving on to life, never again to be precisely the same.
Improvement Era, Dec 1968, p. 22
We are not only to teach purely gospel subjects by the power of the Spirit. We are also to teach secular subjects by the power of the Spirit, and we are obligated to interpret the content of secular subjects in the light of revealed truth. This purpose is the only sufficient justification for spending Church money to maintain this institution [BYU].
"Temples of Learning," BYU, September 1966
Now, fathers and mothers, appreciate your children. Don't turn them over to somebody else to train and educate in regard to matters of eternal life. That is your privilege, and it is a privilege. Teach them to pray and walk uprightly before the Lord, and then in time of need they can go to him and he will answer their prayers. It will be astonishing to you the great happiness that will come into your home that you theretofore have not enjoyed, if you will follow this counsel.
Conference Report, October 1948, p. 166
Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.
(Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, 1795)
It is a duty we owe our children to see that they get an education; but the education of the heart--education in the Gospel, a testimony of the plan of salvation--is the foundation that we should lay in the breast of every child.
(Collected Discourses, Vol.1, September 1, 1889)
There is a spirit working among the Saints to educate their own offspring. If our children will be all we will have for a foundation of glory in eternity, how needful that they be properly trained... There are wolves among us in sheep's clothing ready to lead astray our little ones... Wolves do not devour old sheep when there are any young ones. I have herded sheep long enough to know that. Look after your children.
(Collected Discourses 2:138.)