should be definitively answered. Pulpits, forums, and the press, in their respective spheres, have discussed the matter from almost every stand-point, and some of the ablest thinkers, particularly in the Eastern States, have devoted their time and erudition to the elimination of order out of the chaos of crude and transcendental opinions which of late have filled the pamphlets and books of so many writers in Europe and America on the subject of education. Theories innumerable have been advanced, and historical precedents quoted in favor of particular systems, without much approach to unanimity, and still the problem remains as ever unsolved.
Amongst other expressions of opinion on this all-important subject, we have before us a long and very elaborate essay in the Congregational Quarterly of Boston, strongly in favor of the continuance of the public-school system as received in that classical city, and as earnestly endeavoring to demonstrate that, unless the Bible, “without note or comment,” prayers, hymns, and piety, be taught in the state schools in conformity to the statute of 1826, these institutions will become worse than useless, and should be discountenanced. In the language of the writer: “The school system which requires the ethics can receive them only as indissolubly one with the religion, and the state that cannot sustain a statute like the Massachusetts law of 1826, which requires the principles of piety as well as those of morality to be taught, cannot sustain a common school system.”
As a counterpoise to our New England contemporary, we find in the last number of the American Educational Monthly, a magazine published in this city, as stout a defence of secular education, while exhibiting a decided preference for the removal from our public schools of the Bible and the
discontinuance of all teaching of a religious character. Its arguments on these points, if less subtle, are more practical than those of the Congregational, and some of the facts it adduces in support of its views are thus plainly stated:
“It is well to repeat here what was said in the beginning: that knowledge is not virtue itself, but only the handmaid of virtue. This is the lesson of Connecticut statistics—a state having a first-class university as well as the usual network of common schools: in every nine and seven-tenths marriages there is sure to be one divorce. Ohio, which has no university comparable to Yale, and whose common schools are presumably no better than Connecticut’s, has but one divorce in twenty-four marriages in a much larger population. There are graduates of common schools who make it their business to procure divorces by observing prescribed forms, yet without the knowledge of one or other of the parties—contrary to the spirit of the law.”
From the contemplation of these and other results of our common schools, in which piety and morality are supposed to be taught, the writer in the Monthly concludes that it is better for us to “leave devotional instruction to those whose business it is—to parents and clergymen.”
Another writer, the editor of one of the most widely circulated of our sectarian weekly newspapers, also a decided advocate of the public school system as at present existing, puts forward among others the following novel argument for its perpetuity:
“We hold, therefore, that it is unnecessary and unwise to disperse or redistribute our common school pupils in accordance with the dogmatic or ecclesiastical leanings of their parents respectively—that the inconvenience and cost of so doing would immensely overbalance its benefits. We should need far more schools; yet our children would have to travel much further to reach one of the preferred theological stripe than at present.
We do not decide that soundness of faith is of little consequence—far from it; we only insist that provision is already made for theological instruction apart from our common schools, and that there is no need of making such provision within them. The Roman Catholic and the Protestant coincide with respect to spelling and grammar; the Trinitarian and the Unitarian are in perfect accord as to mathematics, at least in their application to all mundane affairs. Then, why not allow them to read and cipher from the same text-books on week-days, and learn theology in their respective churches and Sunday-schools on the Lord’s day? This seems to us the dictate of economy, convenience, and good sense.”
Nearly every week similar effusions appear in the columns of the so-called religious press, in which are enunciated opinions and speculations as absurd as the above, and yet as varied as the clashing sects they profess to represent. On one point alone, and that a very suspicious one, are they agreed—in a general determination to reduce the children of the Catholics of this country under the sway of a system of public instruction which parents can neither encourage nor countenance. On the minor features of this system, with their usual want of unity, they widely dissent one from the other.