Knoxville weekly chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1875, 1871-05-17
HmOw SHALL WE EDUCATB.7
Our Common Schools.

MEssRs. EDITORS. "One of Very
Many" has shown himself abundantly
able to handle many Father Finnegans,
but VERY Many" love, prize and glory in
our common schOolsystem as an institution,
peculiarly American, and fundamental
and vital to our whole national politi-
cal system, and as such will defend it TO
the last. The common school system of
this country is n system of protection
against ignorance and the thousand evils
arising from it, and that it is Just as much
the duty of the Government to provide for
the instruction of q nation, as to promote
the productive Industries of the people
has become among us political axiom.
Again, though religion is propagated and
maintained in this country by voluntary
efforts and without any alliance IUith the
State ours is Protestant country, our
institutions are Protestant institutions.
The Protestant Bible ana the Protestant
religion have made us directly or indirec-
tly what we are. The Protestant Bible
prompted our fathers to build the church,
the school-house and the college entered
into his literature and constituted his
laws, was the foundation of his civil
rights, and the platform of his views of
government. The precepts and truths of
the Bible have been inwrought into all our
institutions. They are not interlUOUeR :.
they are not laid on. They are fused IN.
They cannot be separated. We have no
institutions, no laws, no social habits, that
are worth anything, and no learning, no
literature of any kind, no liberty, which
have not been nodded and modified by the
Bible. Shall we take this glorious Book,
the Book of the national faith, of the ma
tional religion, from the schools of the
nation-the peoples schools? No. a thou
sand times, no! But make 1t in these
schools more and more effectual in the
diffusion of light and truth. 1t was the
design of the noble founders of our school
system that moral and religious instruction
should go hand in hand with that of the
intellect, and 1t is to be regretted il the fear
of one sect's encroaching upon the tenets
of another has led us to diminish the
amount of moral instruction and to give
unlimited scope to the studies that are
purely intellectual. Let the Bible lie on
the teachers desk, the divine standard of
character and conduct, and let its great
lessons of love to God and man be faithful
ly taught.
For the Catholic clergy and their people,
most of whom are foreigners, whom we
have kindly invited to become fellow-citi-
zens with us in our privileges, and upon
whom we have bestowed all the rights and
immunities that we enjoy ourselves, to de-
mand the entire exclusion OF the Bible
from our common schools, as they have
done in some places, betrays a want of
delicacy objectionable in those who have
been thrown upon our bounty, and have
been educated largely at our expense. But
these willy foes to our American institu-
tons are changing their tactics, and now,
as less impudent and brazen-faced, require
of us to either give up our common schools
or else, which amounts to the same thing,
as you recently showed in straight-for-
ward and mastery editorial, to hand over
Il portion of public money to them, and
let them use it for such schools as they hap
pen to like best-ecclesiastical schools, any
kind of schools but such as are American,
and will make Americans of their chill
dren. Can it be that any of our City
Fathers are in sympathy with views so
anti-American and absurd? If so, let an
indignant people know who they are be-
fore another municipal election.
ANOTHER OF VERY MANY.