Popular Education. [Footnote 51]
[Footnote 51: Report of the Rev. James Fraser. Blackwood's Magazine, Jan. 1868.]
At no period of the world's history have nations and their governments seemed to be in such a feverish state of uncertainty and apprehension. From all quarters of Christendom we hear the cry of change. The last vestiges of the ancient order are disappearing. The rule of caste is everywhere confronted by self-asserting populations, who are no longer willing to bear the patient yoke of servitude, even though consecrated by the traditions of centuries. Russia has abolished her serfdom, so long and so deeply rooted in her soil; and the more advanced nations of Europe, whilst yet retaining their accustomed forms of government, are heaving with the volcanic fires of revolution. We speak not of violent revolution, mainly; but of that other more radical and enduring change, which is the inevitable result of the wonderful mechanical inventions of this age. It is simply impossible in the dread presence of steam and the electric cable, for nations to continue to be what the Greek republics and the Roman empire were, or what mediaeval Europe was, centuries ago. The Christian world is now, for all great practical purposes, one nation. Even that "despotism tempered by assassination" is not now the thing that Talleyrand described in his witty aphorism; for the Czar himself bows to the censure of the world. Napoleon prosecutes the Parisian editors, and sends them to prison; but it avails nothing toward the suppression of the power of opinion. He, to-day, has greater fear of the sentiment of France, than ever his terrible uncle felt for the combined armies of Europe. In England, the House of Peers has become a gloomy pageant, and the Commons, under the new Reform Bill, will henceforth represent, not the gentry, nor even the moneyed lords of the loom, but the toiling millions of Great Britain. In a word, power is passing from the few to the many, from the hereditary rulers to the multitude. We have nothing to do, in this article, with the merits of this vast revolution, as to the manner of change, its good or evil, its probable success or failure. We accept it as a fact, and propose to deal with it as such. It is very possible that all this would have occurred if America had never been discovered; but it is absolutely certain that the achievements of Christopher Columbus and George Washington have been the chief, immediate causes of its rapid consummation. When a Bourbon king, to gratify the traditional policy and animosities of his house, sent his fleets and armies to help the glorious work of building up the independence of this people, little did either he or his enraged and maniac foe, King George, imagine what the end of it all would be! Little did they dream that this land would, in ninety years, contain thirty millions of men of European blood, and that the whole European population would learn new principles, catch new inspirations, and be filled with new longings, new hopes, and stern resolves by intercourse with this young republic. Those pampered kings could not foresee the advent of steam-ships and the telegraph! They could not foretell the power of emigration—how it would people a continent, build up its commerce, fortify it with the materials for armies and navies, ready to be called into existence more magically than the palace of Aladdin, and, above and beyond all, how its sweeping currents of democratic ideas would rush back upon the father-lands everywhere, washing away the old dikes of royalty and caste, and floating the populations over the battlements of feudal castles, musket in hand, and with loud cries for "change;" that is, for the all-essential change which shall see that governments be henceforth established and conducted for the benefit for the governed, and not that the governed shall be held, as they have been for many thousand years heretofore, as the property of the ruler, existing solely for his glory and profit. Europe sends her millions hither, and they in turn send back by every ship to those they left behind, the wonderful record of what they see here; and these inspiring testimonies are read at the firesides of ten thousand hamlets by kindred men whose awakening intelligence and energies are stirring the foundations of European society and shaking all thrones to inevitable ruin, unless they speedily plant themselves on more solid ground than the divine right of kings. It is now very certain that no government anywhere can be said to rest on a sure basis, unless it stand upon the love and confidence of the people. Any other basis is the lawful prey of time and fortune, and will go with the opportunity that may arise for its destruction.
Now, if these be facts with which we have to deal, then a very grave question meets us right here, and it is this: Can any such solid foundation for government be found in a self-governing community? In other words, can the people govern themselves for their own weal, and maintain institutions solely by the force of their own will, which shall accomplish the purposes of good government, and for ever secure the approval of all wise and virtuous citizens? If nay, then, royalty and aristocracy being repudiated, whither shall we fly for refuge and hope? If yea, then how is this most precious end to be attained? We Americans, by birth and blood, and still more so by passionate love of country, say most emphatically that we have never doubted that the way to such a consummation is plain, if only the nation will pursue it. It is nothing new; simply the old and trite aphorism, that a free, self-governing nation can only be so upon the conditions precedent of a clear intelligence and a well-established virtue; the latter (if we may separate the two) must always take precedence, and be regarded as the indispensable prerequisite. It follows, therefore, that education without morality would be at least futile. It is very certain that it would be absolutely fatal; because the intelligent man of vice is armed with keen weapons, which are greatly blunted by ignorance, and are consequently then less dangerous to society. Catiline, the polished patrician, was a greater object of alarm to Cicero and the Roman senate than the rude assassins whom he had hired to do his treason. Before and during the first French revolution, France was ablaze with genius; but, like the high intelligence of the "Archangel ruined," it brought death in its fiery track. Education without morality is more terrible than the sword in the hands of men or a nation. It is not the part of patriotism to deny that we have seen some instances of this in our own favored country, and that the tendency to that perilous condition is very apparent even now. This has resulted from the too prevalent idea, taught by the infidel or indifferent press, and accepted by the unreflecting or equally indifferent citizen, that morality can be maintained without formal or doctrinal religion; that one morality is as good as another; that Plato would answer as well as Christ; that what even the pagans taught—to deal honestly by your neighbor and perform the domestic and public duties of life with reasonable decency—is quite sufficient; and that all else is nothing more than priestly dogmatism and controversial jargon. So that, indeed, the prevailing opinion of the country would almost seem to be (if we judge it by the secular press and multitudes of very honest and intelligent citizens) that America, as a Christian democratic nation, may be satisfied to be as moral, and consequently as grand and powerful, as was pagan Rome in the days of her republican simplicity of manners. They forget or ignore the history of the Decline and Fall, and fail to see in that tremendous catastrophe of the most extraordinary people of the ancient world, the logical development of the certain causes of destruction which were inherent in the nation from the day that Romulus slew his brother upon the wall of the rising city. It cannot be that Christ came for a delusion and a snare, or even as a simple fatuity. If his coming was necessary, then it was to teach a new religion and a new morality; the one inseparable from the other. If this be indisputable, then all education which is not based expressly and clearly upon religion is heathenish, and will prove destructive in the end. It will destroy the very people whom it was expected to save. It will consume them as a fire. Pride and lust of power will burn out the public conscience. The nation will drip with the blood of unjustifiable conquest, as did pagan Rome, or be given up to the ferocious struggle for individual aggrandizement, as seen in later revolutionary times. The father of our country fully recognized these principles, and in the foregoing we have but echoed his words of warning in his Farewell Address to the American People:
"Of all dispositions and habits," he says, "which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. A volume could not trace all their connection with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for regulation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion."
To this it will be replied, by some well-meaning persons, "How can we place education in the United States upon the basis of doctrinal religion, when we have innumerable sects, none of which absolutely agree?" And now we approach the marrow of the subject.
First, let us clear away one difficulty. Let it be very distinctly comprehended that nowhere can the state find its commission as exclusive educator of the people. That is a duty and a privilege belonging, of original right, to the family; it is domestical and not political, though it may be always, and is most frequently, wise and politic that the state should lend efficient aid to assist, but not arbitrarily to control the training of the free citizen's child. The parent is placed over the child by the Creator, and is the natural guardian, primarily responsible for the training which is to lead through this valley of probation to the eternal home. Religious freedom, freedom of conscience, is not a right granted by constitutions, but is the result of the relation of man as a free, moral agent to the Creator who thought fit to make him the master of his own destiny here and hereafter. To coerce the conscience of the child by an educational system, actively or passively, (for there may be effective coercion by negative means,) is to violate the sacred rights of the parent, vested in him by the divine appointment. There is not a religious man, following any form of worship, professing to be a Christian and an American, who can seriously deny this proposition, or who would accept any other in a question involving his rights and duties in regard to his own off-spring. No such man, we are sure, would tolerate any assumption of the authority on the part of the state to step between him and his child in the matter of religious belief and instruction. No other form of tyranny would arouse so quickly the indignant resistance of an American citizen and father; and every upright man feels in his heart that what would be so grievous to him should not be imposed upon any other of his fellow-citizens, directly or indirectly. Actuated by such views in the main, the state provides a system of public schools from which, theoretical (and it may be practically in most cases,) all forms of doctrinal religion are excluded, and education is based upon a vague, undefined, generalized moral teaching which very many eminent men of different religious denominations have pronounced to be "godless," because the doctrines of Christ (the foundation of his moral law) are not taught in such schools according to any interpretation whatever, for the plain reason that it could not be done without such manifest injustice and wrong as we have already protested against. To read the Bible, without note or comment, to young children is, in reality, to lead them to the fountain of living waters and forbid them to drink; whereas, "to expound the word" is, at once, to violate the absolute neutrality which the state is bound to maintain in the presence of conflicting interpretations and dissenting consciences. Such is the precise difficulty. Hence it is, that the Catholic Church has set its face against the peril with which such a system of education threatens its youth; and the Catholic pastors and their flocks, though struggling with poverty, and harassed by ten thousand pressing claims upon their charity, have strained every nerve to establish parochial and other denominational schools where secular education could be imparted without sacrificing religious instruction.
There is no doubt but that there are many strong and marked doctrinal differences between the various Protestant denominations which have led some of their most eminent men to argue against the possibility of a perfect or desirable system of public schools upon the mixed or non-intervention basis. Nevertheless, it is also true that in the fundamental point, essentially characteristic of Protestantism, and in which it especially differs from the Catholic Church (private interpretation and the rejection of tradition) all Protestant churches agree; and herein we find the reason why they can conform to the necessities of such a public-school system as we have described, with some degree of amalgamation; whereas their Catholic fellow-citizens cannot avail themselves of the secular advantages of such schools without a total sacrifice of religious training. We are told by the Rev. James Fraser, despatched on an official mission for the purpose of reporting on the whole subject to the commissioners appointed by her Majesty Queen Victoria, and who visited the United States in 1865, that one of the influences adverse to the success of our American common-school system is, "the growing feeling that more distinctly religious teaching is required, and that even the interests of morality are imperfectly attended to;" and another "influence" is "the very lukewarm support that it receives from the clergy of any denomination, and the languid way in which its claims on support and sympathy are rested on the higher motives of Christian duty;" from which, and other causes, the Rev. Mr. Fraser reluctantly augurs misfortune to the system itself in the future. There can be no doubt but that such "lukewarmness" does exist, and that it is produced solely by the "growing feeling that more distinctly religious teaching is required." No accord of the Protestant sects upon what they call "essentials," can permanently reconcile them to either a doctrinal teaching at the public schools, in which it would be impossible for them all to agree, or to the alternative necessity of excluding from the schools all manner of "distinct religious teaching," without which "even the interests of morality are imperfectly attended to." Hence springs not only the lukewarmness, but the affirmative opposition of distinguished Protestant clergymen to the "godless system."
It is altogether erroneous, however, to suppose, and unjust to charge, that Catholics are hostile to the continuance of the present schools. FAR FROM IT. They rejoice to see their Protestant fellow-citizens availing themselves freely of those great opportunities to instruct the future self-governing citizens of the young republic. They appreciate, nay, they insist upon the absolute necessity of raising the standard of popular intelligence, so as to insure the wisest possible administration of public affairs through the agency of the elective franchise. That their church is profoundly solicitous for the secular education of her people is too manifest for dispute, since she has, by the instrumentality of her various religious orders, established universities, colleges, academies, and innumerable preparatory schools in every great city, and throughout the rural districts of the country, wherever it was possible to do so. A glance at the Catholic Register or Directory, for 1868, will satisfy the most sceptical upon that point. The Roman Catholic Church has covered Europe with such institutions, grand in design, and magnificent in endowment; and it is not her purpose to permit her children in America to fall behind the age for the want of similar advantages, if she can supply their necessities. She is ever appealing to their public spirit, their patriotism, their religious sentiment, to obtain the means to build and conduct her educational establishments; and most nobly have they ever responded; for it was by the steady contributions of the poor mainly, that nearly all of those great works were begun and perfected.
But we may well adopt the assertion of a writer in the last January number of Blackwood's Magazine, that "the fact is palpable and every statesman, philosopher, and candid student of the educational question confesses, that voluntary agencies are wholly unable to undertake a task so gigantic," as that of reaching the great mass of helpless ignorance existing even in the most favored communities. It is exactly here that government may legitimately step in with its organized resources, but without wearing the pedagogue's cap. The wisest governments of Europe, Catholic and Protestant, have done this. They have abandoned the Lacedemonian usurpation of domestic rights, reproduced by the first Napoleon, as he expressed the policy in his curt style, "My principal end in the establishment of a teaching corps is to possess the means of directing political and moral opinions." A candid confession for an autocrat. The nephew, who now reigns over France, has learned by the experience of misfortune to be wiser and more faithful to natural rights. In Catholic France education is entirely free and without favoritism. The public educational fund is equitably distributed to Catholic and Protestant, and each is permitted to rear, under the supervision of their respective clergy, as they may elect, the children of their own religious household. Conscience is respected; and yet the youth of the country are not deprived of instruction in the Christian faith at the public schools. Protestant Prussia is as liberal and as wise as France, and her system of public instruction is based upon the necessity of religious teaching, and the right of the parent to direct the child, and the just relation of the pastor to the parent, and therefore the equity of a proper distribution of the public-school fund. We have not the time, nor is it necessary to go into the details; but it is sufficient to say that the Prussian system concedes more to the Prussian Catholic than the American Catholic has yet asked from an enlightened and democratic American government; and yet, strange to say, the American Catholic has been violently and persistently charged with hostility to public education, and a conspiracy to destroy republican institutions! Even England, iron-clad in her prejudices, has adopted the principles of Prussia, niggardly as her policy toward the public schools has always been. And what shall we say of "benighted Austria," the land of popish concordats! Let Mr. Kay, a recognized authority upon matters of education, and a Protestant, answer this question.
"The most interesting and satisfactory feature of the Austrian system is the great liberality with which the government, though so staunch an adherent and supporter of the Romanist priesthood, has treated the religious parties who differ from themselves in their religious dogma. It has been entirely owing to this liberality that neither the great number of the sects in Austria, nor the great differences of their religious tenets, has hindered the work of the education of the poor throughout the empire. Here, as elsewhere, it has been demonstrated that such difficulties may be easily overcome, when a government understands how to raise a nation in civilization, and wishes earnestly to do so.
"In those parishes of the Austrian empire where there are any dissenters from the Roman Church, the education of their children is not directed by the priests, but is committed to the care of the dissenting ministers. These latter are empowered and required by government to provide for, to watch over, and to educate the children of their own sects in the same manner as the priests are required to do for the education of their children."
He also says:
"And yet in these countries—Austria, Bavaria, and the Rhine provinces, and the Catholic Swiss cantons—the difficulties arising from religious differences have been overcome, and all their children have been brought under the influence of religious education without any religious party having been offended." (Kay, vol. ii. p. 3.)
And bearing testimony to the earnest desire of the Catholic Church to advance the education of her children everywhere, he says:
"In Catholic Germany, in France, and even in Italy, the education of the common people in reading, writing, arithmetic, music, manners, and morals is, at least, as generally diffused and as faithfully promoted by the clerical body as in Scotland. It is by their own advance, and not by keeping back the advance of the people, that the popish priesthood of the present day seeks to keep ahead of the intellectual progress of the community in Catholic lands; and they might, perhaps, retort upon our Presbyterian clergy, and ask if they, too, are in their countries, at the head of the intellectual movement of the age? Education is, in reality, not only not suppressed, but is encouraged by the popish church and is a mighty instrument in its hands and ably used. In every street in Rome, for instance, there are at short distances public primary schools for the education of the children of the lower and middle classes of the neighborhood. Rome, with a population of 158,000 souls, has 372 public primary schools, with 482 teachers, and 14,000 children attending them. Has Edinburgh so many schools for the instruction of these classes? I doubt it. Berlin, with a population about double that of Rome, has only 264 schools. Rome has also her university, with an average number of 600 students, and the papal states, with a population of 2,500,000, contains seven universities; Prussia, with a population of 14,000,000, has but seven."
If the church has been found in hostility to educational systems, it has been when, as in Ireland, the schools have been made proselytizing agencies and instruments of oppression; and if she has disfavored without opposing other systems, as here, it was solely to preserve her own people from the damaging effects of a purely secular education, and to secure for them the higher advantages of a religious training. If others find that the schools answer all their wants, she is well pleased to see them derive every benefit therefrom which the best administration of such a system can produce. But the Catholic people say: If we who are counted by millions, and who are daily adding to the wealth of the nation by our labor and enterprise, are required to pay taxes for the support of the public schools which we cannot use for the education of our children, ought we not, at least, to receive an equitable proportion of the public fund, to assist us in securing what every good citizen wishes to see accomplished, the education of our youth? We are now millions, and millions more are coming, by ship and steamer, every day, almost every hour. We are a part of the nation, children and citizens of the great republic. Shall we add to the virtue and intelligence of the community, or to its ignorance and vice? We are struggling with all our might, and devoting all our means to reach the lowest stratum of our society, and lift it up into the light and air of secular knowledge and spiritual grace. Why should not the State of New York help in the good work?
The regulations of France, Prussia, Austria, England, and other countries of Europe would assuredly afford to our legislators the practical details of a good working system, which it is not our province to suggest in form, uninvited. Let it be conceded, however, that millions of men throughout this country should not be taxed for establishments of which they cannot conscientiously avail themselves, unless, at the same time, they are permitted to participate, in a reasonable way, in the enormous funds derived from those tax-rates. Let the schools, though denominational when endowed by the state, be subject to state inspection so far as to insure the full compliance with the requirements of the general law as to the standard of education to be bestowed, but with no further control over management or discipline.
In the European countries referred to, (it may be said here generally,) each religious denomination when sufficiently numerous in a district to justify it, is permitted to establish a denominational school; receiving its share of the public fund, and being subject to governmental inspection as to the proper application of the money, and the faithful discharge of the engagement to impart secular knowledge according to the fixed educational standard. The selection of the school-books and the religious training of the children are in such cases placed in the charge of the clergy, or made subject to their revision. Where the religious denomination has not sufficient numerical strength to enable it to establish a separate school, its children attend the other public school or schools, but are carefully guarded against all attempts at proselytizing, and their religious instruction is confided to their own ministers. In no instance is the proper proportion of the school fund ever refused to any denomination which has the number requisite under the law for the establishment of a separate school. By these means, perfect freedom of conscience is preserved, and public harmony and good-will promoted; whilst at the same time, the children of all churches are brought up in the wisdom of the world without losing the fear of God. In this way, too, religious freedom becomes a practical thing, and not a constitutional platitude or an empty national boast. In this serious matter, this great national concern, those European monarchies have expelled sham altogether. Have we? Do we in the United States, vaunting our hatred of "church and state," our devotion to entire freedom of conscience, our preeminent love of "fair play," our respect for the inviolable rights of minorities, do we imitate the liberal example of monarchical Europe, Catholic and Protestant, when we tax our six millions of Catholics for public schools, and then refuse them a participation in the fund? What just man will say that such a rule is right? What wise man will say that it is politic? At least, let it not be said that in our great cities, where there are tens of thousands of poor Catholic children, and in those rural districts where the numbers are notoriously sufficient to justify the establishment of one or more schools, they shall be driven to seek an education under a system which their parents cannot conscientiously sanction, or be left to the chances of procuring the rudiments of learning from the over-taxed and doubly-taxed resources of their co-religionists. Help the schools now actually existing, and which are filled to overflowing with eager scholars; and assist those who are willing to build up others; the cost is no greater; the educational policy of the state is equally satisfied, whilst the morals of the rising generation, purified by religious faith and strengthened by religious practices, will give the republic assurance of a glorious future.
We are satisfied that such a system would give us an enlightened Christian people, and not merely a nation of intelligent men of the world, as cold as they are polished, and as indifferent to divine things as they are eager for the pleasures of sense and the pride of life.
This would be a truly solid basis upon which to build and perpetuate the empire of a self-governing nation. Without this, our constitution is a rope of sand, our republicanism a delusion, and our freedom a miserable snare to the down-trodden nationalities all over the earth.