The morning star and Catholic messenger. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1868-1881, 1869-06-20
The School Question, North.

commerce on the Important SuDJecI OF pup
lie schools. We commend it to an atten-
tive perusal, and regret to add that not
only Professionals, but some Catholics also,
have need of such information as will be
found there. .t ~
They will find that the tendency of the
public school is ambitious; it seeks expan-
sion and aggrandizement. In New York,
as elsewhere, it was founded on the osten
sibl~ pretext of furnishing plain education
to the poorer class of children, upon the
assumption that ignorance is dangerous to
the public. This assumption is the root of
the whole public school system without it
there would be no shadow of pretext for in
reference on the part of the State, or for
the imposition of school tax. Yet the
Journal Of Commerce says distinctly that
the system has become far more aristocrat
ic in it's practice and pretensions. Course
after course of higher studies has been
added, 90 so that at least all of the upper
classes might desire no higher institutions
for their children" and "the students in
some departments graduate with collegiate
honors, while the masses of poor, ragged
waits outside grow yearly more numerous
and more neglected"
This is but natural consequence of
abandoning the fundamental idea of the
scheme. It's intention is to educate the
poor. If once expanded beyond that limit
so as to attract wealthy children by high
er course, the ragged ones are shamed off.
1t may be very good democracy to invite
and even induce aristocratic children to
associate with poor ones, but it is new
idea grated on the original one, and turns
out to be parasite which saps the life of
the parent stem. 1t would be very nice
and democratic for all children to associate
together, but strange to say, the poorer
ones don't think so. they are ashamed of
their rags and dirt. The teachers are
ashamed of them also and after a longer
or shorter course of lectures on the subject
of neatness and cleanliness, and of snub-
bling by school fellows, the poor children
drop off from the school founded for their
benefit, and leave it to their better dressed
These ideas have practical application
in our own latitude. Nine-tentbs of the
children at the public schools could easily
pay the expenses of tuition at private
schools. Why, therefore, apply the cum
brous machinery of taxation, with it's
routine of assessment, collection and dis
to pay the schooling of children
whose parents can easily pay it to the
teacher directly out of their own pockets
If you must tax Catholics to support
schools, the doors of which. are closed
against their own children by their own
conscience, why tax them for the rich, in
stead of combining their contribution to tho
education of the poor7 Why make them
help to sustain academies and colleges
where the children of wealthy aristocrats
are to be educatedP Has not the drayman,
the mechanic, the laborer, a right to be dis
satisfied with this highfown idea of educa-
tion7 If you st~have schools for the
poor, let them be primary schools, and let
them be reserved for the poor.
= The Journal Of Commerce, however, is by
no means an ardent advocate of any inter
ference whatever by the State with the
subject. 1t argues that education is like
religion, an excellent good but not within
the objects aimed at by n national organi-
zation, those objects being political.
though education should legiti-
matgty fail within the functions of q porfti-
cal corporation or sovereign, the Journal
still doubts seriously the expediency of its
exercising that function, seeing that such
things are so much more efficaciously at
tended to by private philanthropy, charity
or zeal. Can any one believe, it says, that
the asylums and retreats, supported by the
State for the poor, the insane, the sick, the
orphan, are "as we'll managed as those
which rely on individual charity, or, if
the State did nothing to educate the chill
dren, that there would be half as many
ia!e degraded e4steast
our streets to-day 2" -,
The Journal even attacks the grand fun
damental principle on which public schools
are based, viz that ignorance is dangerous
to the public WE'LL being. If that is true