The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1889-01-24

The recommendation of Gov. Hoard In
regard to the necessity of supervision OF
private and parochial schools must meet
the approval of every fair-minded citizen,
though the embodiment of the idea In
law and imposing the additional duty OF
supervision on the county and the city
superlntendents without increasing the
force would result in little or no good.
The recommendation itself seems to be a
little weak and half-hearted. 1t
seems to be the deliverance of man con-
scious of the existence of an evil he would
wish to remove while it betrays at the
same time timidity about making open
war on SO formidable an institution as
the private school. Superintendent
would be powerless for good unless they
were empowered with the right to ex-
anime und license teachers for such
schools in the same manner they do for
public schools. To do this would be to
undermine the private school entirely,
and it is safe to say that neither the Wis
consin legislature nor Governor Hoard
has the temerlty to attempt anything Of
the kind. Expediency is the guiding
principle of our legislators. They found
it expedient once to permit a foreign Ian
guage to usurp place in the daily pro-
gramme, not for the culture which it
gives, but for the factions which it would
placate. Private schools are -Aimply
carrying the teaching of foreign languages
little farther than the law intended the
public school to do. But private schools
have never been organized primarily to
teach a foreign language; they arose in
response to notion that the religious
side of child nature could not be sub
served by the common school. No oppo-
nent of private schools, would dare deny
people the right to give religious instruc-
ton in their own way and to what extent
they please, and if this instruction to-
gether with that in a foreign language
consumes the time it is difficult to see on
what grounds consistent with past legis-
lation and past policy those schools can
be attacked by law. The writer is, in
deed, no friend of the parochial school,
but his notions of moral training are of
no immediate Importance to the believers
in such schools That dissenting schools
should breed distrust and disqualify
young Americans for living in harmony
and for proper appreciation of our re-
publican institutions is something to be
deplored. But we have allowed this
incongruous element to gather strength
that we can not now overcome by any
possible legislation without producing
an actual revolution. People learn slow
ly, but they will learn, and in time if the
state does its duty toward elevatlng the
standard of the common school so as to
give the greatest possible advantages to
those who avail themselves of its offer
ings and SO as to place it immeasurably
above any possible grade Of widespread
private school we see no reason to fear
but what the latter will eventually yield
all its functions not strictly theological
to the public school and cause the peo-
pie to revert to Sunday school for the in
struction to guide the weary pilgrim in
his search for the land of promise. There
fore, if the Wisconsin legislature will |
confne itself for the present to the con-
sideration of the improvement of the |
schools it has established, if it will pass
some law that will debar callow youths
and foolish maidens from teaching and |
do something to provide that only the
professionally educated shall teach, and |
if it will place the management of educa-
tional matters in the hands only of COM
petent persons If it will do this without !
to the subterfuge and ambig-
nifty that it did when it passed the
library and the physiology law it can
well afford to let the private school take
care of itself.