OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS by W. N. G.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 12, 1895

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 21, No. 49.

OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

By W. N. G.

The “little red schoolhouse” is all right with the Catholics when they can get the positions connected with the schools, especially where Catholic teachers are employed. We have just heard of an instance that points which way the wind is blowing. An experienced teacher in the interior of this state, whose health was failing, was advised by a physician to seek a change of climate. Accordingly she sought a position in a hilly county adjoining the ocean coast. Being informed of a vacancy in a certain school, she applied for a position, and was asked what religion she professed. Not being a Catholic, she could not get the place.

The public school has been, in the providence of God, a source of great good, but, like all other earthly institutions, it has its vulnerable points, where the enemy of souls may enter and has entered to subvert the good intent and turn the institution into an engine for the furtherance of his own deceptive purpose. It was designed to have these schools strictly secular in their teaching, as this was the only manner in which they could be made acceptable and useful to all classes who are obliged to contribute to their support. But the enemy of true religion finds even in this arrangement an opportunity for propagating anti-religion, which in turn merges into false religion under the guise of science.

There is no restriction in teaching the sciences, and it is now the scholarly fad to hold up science as infallible, even in the face of the word of God, who is the Author of all true science. And this inclination has developed into the religio-scientific doctrine of evolution, the holding of which is now deemed a mark of higher erudition. Professors in the higher educational institutions who wish to attract special notice turn to the theory of evolution as the theme that will give them the highest consideration. And many of the lower-grade educators apparently think that imitation of the greater lights is the road to fame.

The public school has long been eulogized as the “palladium of our liberties,” and so it has been in the past, and has incurred the bitter enmity of the Romish Church. This church has long been working for a division of the public school funds, in order that her parochial schools may be supported as public schools. At the same time she is endeavoring by every possible means to gain control of the public school itself, and is making remarkable headway. The advantage that has been taken in the public schools to teach anti-religion, or false religion, in the name of science, has given a great impetus to the Roman cry of “godless schools;” and a waning Protestantism is thus lured into an encouragement of Romanism, supposing it to be preferable to avowed infidelity.

Wherever the Roman Church can get sufficient influence in the public schools, she aims to turn them into semi-religious schools by securing Catholic teachers and having the Catholic children taught in religion out of regular school hours. Or, if there be not too much opposition, a decided Roman influence is cast in the school proper. This is very easily done, just as other false religious theories are clandestinely introduced. The public schools, burdened on the one hand with infidelity and on the other with the influence of Romanism, to say nothing of being (especially in the large cities) the conservatories of speculative financial schemes, are fast becoming estranged from their beneficent purpose. W. N. G.