Religion in the Public Schools.
Speaking of the recent effort of the rector of a Roman Catholic church in this city to bring the city government and the churches into partnership for the control of public school teaching, The Outlook gives the following summary of arguments for and against religious instruction in the public schools:— “In our judgment, the issue between the ecclesiastical and the non-ecclesiastical system of education is not one which can be compromised. One or the other must be adopted and consistently maintained. By the ecclesiastical system we mean one in which the education is conducted by and under the control of a church; by the non-ecclesiastical, we mean one which is conducted by and under the control of the state. One system makes popular education an ecclesiastical function, the other makes it a political function. No middle ground is possible; nor is any such partnership as that suggested by Dr. McSweeney, by which the state furnishes the money, establishes the standard, and prescribes the curriculum, while the church selects the teachers and administers the school, either practical or desirable. “We believe that we understood the arguments in favor of treating popular education as an ecclesiastical function. We here summarize the arguments in a few sentences. They are, in brief, that it is the function of government to govern, and educating is not governing; that democracy especially should remit to private enterprise all matters that can be so remitted, and education is such a matter; that America has definitely decided that religion is not a matter for the state, that education is inseparably connected with religion, and that the same arguments which forbid a state system of religion forbid a state system of education; that if education is left to the state it cannot be kept from politics, and politics corrupts wherever it enters; that true education includes the development of the moral and spiritual as well as of the intellectual nature, and that to omit the former from the schools is to make them godless, irreligious, and so eventually immoral, while to attempt to introduce religion into schools supported and carried on by the state is impossible in a country with such radical differences of opinion in religious matters as exist in America. These arguments must be conceded to be not without weight; they deserve serious consideration; it is not strange that a considerable, though we believe lessening party in the United States are influenced by them to favor a parochial system, either in lieu of or in combination with a state system; and he who would give this question a fair and rational consideration must recognize both the honesty and the intelligence of those who take the ecclesiastical side of the question. Nor shall we attempt here to answer these arguments seriatim. We shall instead simply state, with almost equal brevity, the cogent reasons which we believe have wrought in the American people an unalterable determination to maintain the state or non-ecclesiastical system without compromise and without partnership. “I. If nothing succeeds like success, nothing fails like failure; and the ecclesiastical system has been a lamentable failure. The Roman church has had for centuries the control of education in Spain, Italy, and France, and the result is not only a lamentable amount of illiteracy, but also, what is worse, a lamentable lack of independence and intelligence in the common people. The Protestant church has had control of popular education in England for centuries, and it can hardly be doubted that greater progress in popular education has been made in the half-century of the board schools, established and maintained by the state, than in all the previous centuries of the ecclesiastical dominion and the parochial schools. On the other hand, the state both supports and administers the systems of education in Germany and in America, and these are the two countries in which popular education has been developed with the greatest success; these are the countries in which there is the widest diffusion of intelligence as well as of learning among the people. An ounce of practise is worth a pound of theory, and no wise community will abandon because of theoretical arguments a plan which is working well for one which has never worked at all. “II. The reason for this difference it is not difficult to discover. The ecclesiastical system rests on authority as its foundation, and seeks obedience as its end; the non-ecclesiastical system rests on reason as its foundation and seeks independence as its end. That there are some teachers in public schools who do not understand the free spirit of public education, and some teachers in parochial schools who are neither subservient to ecclesiastical authority themselves nor endeavor to make their pupils so, is doubtless true; but both are exceptions. The tendency of the parochial school is to discourage questioning, of the public school to encourage it. The one teaches its children to accept without doubt what they are told; the other teaches them to inquire for themselves what is truth, and to seek for it in all quarters. The common ecclesiastical criticism on our public schools illustrates and emphasizes this distinction: that criticism is that the public school tends to infidelity. It doubtless does tend to skepticism in all realms; and skepticism is the first condition of intellectual activity. If we want a people who will follow its leaders, we want the ecclesiastical system; if we want a people who will think for themselves, we want the non-ecclesiastical system. “And these two systems, thus radically differing in their foundation and the end they seek, cannot be united in any kind of a partnership. It is not enough for the state to pay the money, fix the standards, determine the curriculum; it must select the teachers, and inspire the entire system: else that system will become in its spirit ecclesiastical, not independent; will cultivate in its pupils allegiance to authority, not the habit of thinking for themselves. That there are dangers in both directions may be conceded. Independent thinking is often crude, egotistical, erroneous thinking. But this is better than not thinking at all, as any form of life has200in it more hope for the future than any description of death. “III. The first objection seems to the American a conclusive reason for not transferring the education of our youth from the state to the church; the second objection seems to him also a conclusive reason against attempting to commit the education to a partnership between state and church; the third objection is equally conclusive against any scheme which assorts the children of the community in different schools according to the religious prepossessions of their parents. Any such assortment runs denominational divisions down to the cradle, and so intensifies the religious prejudices which are too often fostered, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, in the home and in the church. In Canada, where the children of Roman Catholic parents are taught in Roman Catholic schools and the children of Protestant parents are taught in Protestant schools, the division between Protestants and Roman Catholics is as deep and the controversy as bitter as it was half a century ago. In the United States, where Roman Catholic children and Protestant children grow up together in the same school, joining in the same sports as well as in the same studies, religious prejudice is steadily disappearing; . . . there is neither a Roman Catholic vote nor an Orange vote, and it is not likely that there ever will be. The religious problem is one of the most serious which confronts our Canadian brethren. We have no such problem on this side of the line, nor shall we be likely to have such a problem so long as we maintain for the education of all our children an unsectarian public-school system wholly free from every form of ecclesiastical influence.”