Untitled article by W. T. Harris

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · October 16, 1890

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 5, No. 41

Keep Them Separate.

By W. T. Harris

It seems to me clear that it is better to separate religious instruction from secular instruction, and to place it in a different school—a school connected with the church. . . . If the pupil leaves the secular school and repairs to the church for a religious lesson, the impression made upon him is much stronger than the same lesson given in the secular school in connection with secular lessons. Careful observers of the effects of the religious lessons placed on programmes of schools in Germany, and Austria, and other nations, tell us that where the secular studies are taught according to the true method the pupils are prone to hold in a sort of contempt the contents of their religious lessons. They are apt to bring their critical intellects to bear on dogmas and become skeptical of religious truth altogether. It is well-known that the people of Germany are much given to skepticism. Its educated class is famous for its “free-thinking,” so-called. The French educated class, all of which was in its youth under parochial school influence, is atheistic.

All Protestant nations are agreed that there should be a separation of Church and State. The Catholic laity all over the world is nearly unanimous in the same opinion. I think that even the Catholic priesthood, at least in the United States, holds this view. The separation of Church and State implies the separation of Church and school. The Church and State are separated in the interest of the perfection of both. . . . The concession made in Savannah, Poughkeepsie, and a few other places, viz: a compromise which permits Catholic religious exercises before and after school in the school room, or which permits the teacher to wear the garb of some Catholic order—the garb of the sisters or the priesthood—militates against the public character of the school and cannot be conceded as a possible compromise.—W. T. Harris, United States Commissioner of Education, in Independent.