Arizona weekly miner., 1875-08-20
Arizona School Question Abroad


 Eugene Lawrence writes for Harpers' Weekly with reference to the Public School system in Arizona We take the following extracts:
 The controversy rages among the silver-bearing mountains of Ari- zona, and it is still in doubt whether caste and sectarianism may not win a complete triumph in a region where pure republican, ism might we'll find its natural home. That Chief Justice of high court should em- ploy his leisure in assailing the common schools is an unexampled event. It has usually been thought that the dignity of the bench was best assured by the abstinence of its occupants from all political controversy; but ultramontane zeal, 1t seems, Is insensi- ble to the restraints of common propriety, and the impartiality of the judge is laid aside in the ardor of the advocate.
 The arguments upon which our Chief Jus tice relies are not new. The "Church," he asserts, is the only power that has the right to teach; the State has none. State teaching is necessarily immoral and goddess, because it wants the authority of the "Church." The state has no right to enter your house and tear your child from your arms. The theory of the common school education is plain Communism, and may lead to the mad orgies of Paris. The .Church," he asserts, will never yield this power to the state The conflict is irrecon- ciable, and war must begin which can only end in anarchy and ruin. The ultra montanes are, it seems, resolved never to permit the state to educate their children But to this mode of reasoning there is but one answer: the Roman Catholics, like other citizens, must submit to the law. And the plain reason of the educational law is that neither the Roman Catholic Church nor any other has shown itself fitted or able to in- struct nations. The only successful system of education afforded by the Roman Catho- lie denomination must be both "godless and immoral" since it leads only to the grossest criminality, while the education provided by the different states diminishes crime and produces usually honest and industrious citizens. The massacre at Acapulco and the | murders at San Miguel are conclusive argu- | ments against leaving education in the hands | of the "Church."
 In Roman Catholic countries both the | education tolerated and the neglect of edu- l cation seem equally dangerous to freedom | and good morals. In Massachusetts, for ex- |
  eign born, and educated or rather left who'll | ly uneducated, by the "Church." From this one-seventh part of the population come nearly three -fourths of the crime. Says the report of 1871: By its neglect | of education it prepares its members for the almshouse and the jail. If all Massachusetts were under the educational supervision of the ultramontane priests, it would produce Inc nf 1 ism it docs at present, and it is easy to com- pute how soon, under such rule, that pros- porous community would be reduced to the condition of Mexico or Spain. If Arizona is to be educated under similar conditions, it can never hope to rank high among its sister States, or to rival the prosperity of Califor- mia or Colorado.
 That the Roman Catholic Church-at least in its ultramontane and exclusive form has never succeeded in educating any ma. ton over which it has ruled, nor has appa- rently desired to educate it, the Chief Jus tice of Arizona might easily inform himself
 All over South America, Mexico and Roman Catholic Canada the great mass of the men and women are whole ly without intelligence, and only the few share in the impulse of progress. Knowl- edge flies from the rule of the "Church.n Ultramontane Belgium has thirty three per cent. of its population who can neither read nor write lsee Report of the Commissioners of Education, 1871, p. 4S6). Protestant Denmark has scarcely any one; Norway and l Sweden are at least as well educated as Denmark. Ultramontane France in its west ern departments leaves one-half its popula- tion wholly uninstructed During the war of 1870 it was found that l7 out of l30 French officers at Kongsberg, prisoners of war, could not write their names or sign the . pay rolls, and the extraordinary proportion 2 of illiterates among the common soldiers is ] thought to explain in part the easy triumph t of the Germans. "The common people of France seldom see a book" says General C Hazen The School and the Army, Page 37S); Q "they have no magazines, and newspapers t are scarcely known among themn It is plain n that with such system of education Ari- zona would become barren field for the ih editor and the printer. "We have no popu- Q lation," General Hazen adds, "that at all c to the poorer peasantry of ? !, Such is the result of the ultramontane rule = ef Frvuce The education supplied by the