Public School Education

by Michael Müller

As to those who are able, and desire further information, they can have it to any extent at the colleges, convents, academies and higher schools.

Many of our "dissenting brethren," of the various denominations, are equally diligent, according to the measure of grace and light given them, to bring their children up in Christian morals and education. They have their own schools, and support them, or they send their children to Catholic institutions, and will not have them tempted or corrupted by the evil influences, moral, social, and intellectual, that emanate and surround those "whited sepulchres"—the godless schools—as the miasm emanates and surrounds the pestilent marsh. In all these schools the children are carefully trained in Christian practices, prayers, and religious duties, as well as taught a good, plain, practical course of studies. In fact, they are truly educated; while in the Public Schools they are simply instructed, as you might irrational animals, according to their instinct. The Jews also teach and bring up their children in the religion of their fathers, at their own expense; so that more than one-half are, fortunately for themselves, and fortunately for society, the good order and well-being of the State, educated outside of immoral and dangerous pest-houses. It is on this element of our population that the future of the State depends; for if we are to have a sound public conscience and a controlling conservative influence in public or private affairs, we must, under God and His Church, obtain it from a true Christian education.

At these parish schools, supported by voluntary aid, the expenses of pupils per year is under seven dollars; at the Public Schools, it is, I am informed, about thirty-two dollars; so that it costs about four times as much to give the poor, miserable, shallow, infidel instruction in the Public Schools, as it does to give a good Christian education in the denominational ones; or, in plainer language, to educate 20,000 children in denominational schools saves to tax-payers not less than the small sum! of $500,000.

"If thy right hand scandalize thee, cut it off and cast it from thee; for it is expedient for thee that one of thy members should perish, rather than thy whole body be cast into hell."—(Matt. v. 30.) By the present Public School system, the State scandalizes the family, because it usurps the rights and duties that belong alone to parents; it scandalizes the tax-payer, because it takes money from him which it has no right to take; it scandalizes society, because, instead of teaching virtue, it teaches vice; it scandalizes the young men and the young women, because, instead of inspiring them with love for Christianity and their religious duties, it inspires them rather with contempt for religion, and turns them into actual unbelievers, and thus destroys the very life of society and the basis of every government; it scandalizes all nations, because there is not, and there has never been, any nation inculcating education without religion.

By its present system of education, the State has weakened, and will finally break up and destroy, the Christian family. The social unit is the family, not the individual; and the greatest danger to American society is, that we are rapidly becoming a nation of isolated individuals, without family ties or affections. The family has already been much weakened, and is fast disappearing. We have broken away from the old homestead, have lost the restraining and purifying associations that gathered round it, and live away from home in hotels and boarding-houses. A large and influential class of women not only neglect, but disdain, the retired and simple domestic virtues, and scorn to be tied down to the modest but essential duties—the drudgery, they call it—of wives and mothers. We are daily losing the faith, the virtues, the habits, and the manners, without which the family cannot be sustained. This, coupled with the separate pecuniary interests of husband and wife secured, make the family, to a fearful extent, the mere shadow of what it was and of what it should be. What remains of the family is only held together by the graces and virtue of women. But even this last hope is fast breaking down, by the great facility of obtaining a divorce a vinculo matrimonii—a facility by which the laws of most of the States of the Union grant to lust the widest margin of license, and legalize concubinage and adultery. Now when the family goes, the nation goes too, or ceases to be worth preserving. God made the family the type and basis of society; "male and female made he them."

By its present system of education, the State makes war on God and His Christ, and says, with Lucifer, "Non servio"; and this is the daring rebel against God and His law, that would claim the innocent children of the Christian family as its own; teach them its false maxims, promising them, as Satan, its master, did the Saviour, riches, and honors, and power, if they will but fall down and worship it. How incomprehensibly strange it is, that good men and women who profess Christianity, and acknowledge the obligations of its commandments, should give ear to this tempter, instead of saying, "Get behind me, Satan," and, "Thou art a liar and a cheat from the beginning." The State, in this subject of education, represents the world; and religion, as well as experience, teaches us its folly, its wickedness, its treachery and its ambition. "The State promises bread and gives a stone." It promises wealth, and honor, and gives taxes, slavery, and degradation. It is blind, and it attempts to lead; it is ignorant, and it offers to teach and direct the young. It will not receive the law, and it claims the right to give it. It arrogates the "higher law," and "would be as God." There is the danger; and it is against this the fight must be made, if we would not surrender our civil and religious freedom, our temporal and eternal happiness.

Surely it is time for all good Christians of America to cry out to our rulers, "And now, O ye rulers, understand; receive instruction, you that judge the earth."—(Ps. ii. x.) Do not force any longer upon a Christian nation an educational system which produces such results; do not train any longer our children without religion—to infidelity, and consequently to revolution. Do not teach the youth of America any longer to reject God and His religion; they will not be long faithful to you if you make them unfaithful to the faith of their fathers. You, and all the classes in society who delight in seeing the influence of religion weakened or destroyed, never seem to realize, until it is too late, that you are sure to be the especial victims of your own success. The man who scorns to love God and His law, how shall he continue to love his neighbor? The man who has said "there is no God," is he not on the point of also saying "lust is lawful," "property is robbery"? If you raise instruments to deny God and to do away with all religious principles, God will use these very instruments to do away with you also.

Your Pagan system of education will ultimately overturn all order in the land. Among ancient Pagan nations, where the poor were comparatively ignorant—where they did not know their rights—it was easy to hold them in bondage; but now things have changed. Discontent in the lower order of society can no longer be smothered. Education has become general; and, unfortunately, the very element, without which education is often a curse, is omitted. Religious education has been separated from secular instruction. Without religion, the poor are unable to control their passions, or to bear their hard lot. They see wealth around them, and, unless taught by religion, they see no reason why that wealth should not be divided amongst them. Why should they starve, while their neighbors roll in splendor and luxury? If the poor were ignorant, they would not, perhaps, notice all the sad privations of their state; they would not, perhaps, feel them so keenly. But they are partially educated, and "a little learning is a dangerous thing."

They know their power, and, not having the soothing influence of religion to restrain them, they use their power. They have done so in France and elsewhere, and if they do not always succeed in producing revolution, and anarchy, it is only the bayonet that prevents them. Such is the abyss that yawns beneath the feet of our country, and into which the advocates of education without religion—perhaps some of them unconsciously—seek to precipitate us, by continuing to force upon this Christian nation an anti-Christian, an anti-American system of education.

Surely the grievance is not simply an affair of taxes, or so much money unjustly levied and collected. This we might bear, as we have to do in other cases of injustice, for righteousness' sake. But we have a duty to God, ourselves, and our children. We recognize the office and obligations of the State as temporal ruler, but we do not acknowledge in it an absolute and unconditional authority. We do not admit the doctrine of passive obedience. We will not and cannot surrender the education of our children to its dictation and control, for that is a trust placed in our hands by a higher power, and for which we will have to answer, at the last day, on our salvation. I ask—am I right in all that I have said upon the State and its godless system of education? If I am, then I think I have a right to ask for a verdict of "Guilty." If there are still some who cannot see that I am right, then let them, without delay, be operated upon for amaurosis. But then, in God's name, is it not high time to inquire what should be done to correct the system, and stop the torrent of its evil influences? This is a great question; it demands a speedy and satisfactory solution. The interests it involves are commensurate with time and eternity.