Knoxville daily chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1882, 1871-05-12
HOW SHALL WE EDUCATE.
DIR CITY SCHOOLS.

MRssRs. EDITORS: Inasmuch as the dis
cussion about the division of the school
fund seems to take general range, you
will allow me to express my views also.
AS long as the discussion was conducted
by your first correspondent, "One of Very
Many" L kept aloof from taking any part,
feeling that it was in able hands. His ar
guments were sustained by sound logic,
reason and liberation. But your second
correspondent, Another of Very Many /"
takes different view of the subject, and,
in my opinion. a very dangerous one
How the views of your correspondent
are in accordance with the platform of the
great Republican party in this country
how sectarian policy in the management
of free schools, whether it emanates from
Catholic or Protestant sources, is in accord
ance with the principles of liberty and
freedom, L cannot see. But to the article
in question. "Another of Very Manyp
takes the ground that this is Protestant
country, that our institutions are Protest
ant, and that our liberty has been nodded
and modified by the Bible (the Protestant
Bible, for the writer seems to ignore all
others. He further says that "the Catholic
clergy and their people are mostly foreign
ers, whom we had kindly invited to be-
come our fellow-citizens, and that it betrays
want of delicacy objectionable in those
wiz nave UCcu tlIOWH uDOH OuI
and have been educated largely at our ex-
pense," &C., &c.
These arguments remind me very forci-
bly,. of the old Know Nothing doctrines
with their motto "Americans thall rule
America" Does your correspondent in
augurate this dangerous policy? Does he
deny that the foreigners in this country,
large class of whom are as intelligent as
moral as industrious as those to the manor
born, have the same right as he has? Does
he expect them to dance to his fiddle I?
Has he forgotten that the foreigners, by
thousands and thousands have shouldered
their muskets and fought for the perpetua-
ton of that liberty of which he boasts so
much, that they have bought their right of
citizenship with their life blood. Where
would your liberty be to-day if these for
eigners had remained silent spectators
during the late rebellion !? And has it al
ready come to that, where the bones of
these thousands of foreigners, who have
shed their blood for their suppression of
the rebellion, which shook the very life of
the republic have hardly bleached, that
their survivors shall be reminded, the
''they have been thrown upon our bounty,
and have been educated largely on our ex-
pense." s-l-z9t-
1 deny in toto that this is Protestant.
country; it is neither Protestant nor a
Catholic country, but country where all
religious scots and denominations have an
equal right. Public schools ought to be
free from all sectarian influences, open
alike to the Protestant, the Catholic or the
Jew, and on that very principle I am OPP
posed to the division of the school fund,
and that seemed to me the ground which
your first correspondent took; but to make
it Protestant school is as much sectarian
as to make it Catholic, and would be as
dangerous as the other, and entirely an.
tagonistic to the principles of a Republican
people. COSMOPOLITAN.