Waterbury evening Democrat., 1892-06-02
AMERICAN FREE SCHOOLS.
They win Celebrate the Dedica-
 tion Of the Worlds Fair.
Columbus Day Co Be Made Festive CO casIon Throughont the United states A Grand and Worthy
 Undertaking.

Undertaking.
 The project of converting Columbus day into an American school festival will be heartily commended by thought ful minds. The dedication of the ex- position buildings and grounds will be a national event of crowning impor- tance; but in order to emphasize the sig nifcance of the discovery of the new world and to render it inteIligible throughout the length and breadth of the land it is proposed to make every schoolhouse local center for commem- orative exercises. This plan has re- ceived the sanction of the worlds con- gress commission and of the American superfntendents of education. An ex- ecutive committee has been appointed to organize 8 national movement by which thirteen million school children in every village and town in the union can unite in carrying out sim- pie but effective programme on that historic anniversary. There is nothing impracticable in the scheme. It will only be necessary for every school to have flag of it's own to raise and salute on the morning of the cele- bration, and then to be prepared to listen to an address and to join in sing ing an ode prepared for the occasion under the direction of the national com mittee. A holiday will be put to the highest educational use if all the school children of the country can be brought together at the same hour to commem- crate the greatest event in the modern world.
 The voyage of Columbus, says the New York Tribune, was protest against the ignorance of the medieval age. The discovery of the new world was the first sign of the real renais- sance of'the old world. It created new heavens and new earth, broadened immeasurab1y the horizon of men and nations and transformed the whole or der of European thought. Columbus was the greatest educator who ever lived, for he emancipated mankind from the narrowness of its own ig- norance and taught the great lesson that human destiny, like divine mercy, arches over the whole world. If a perspective, of four centuries of prog ress could have hoated like mirage before theteyes of the great discoverer as he was sighting San Salvador the American schoolhouse would have loomed up'as the greatest institution of the new worlds future. Behind him he had left medieval ignorance incum- bered with superstition and paralyzed by an ecclesiastical pedantry which passed for learning. Before him lay a new world with the promise of the potency of civil and religious liberty, free education and popular enEghten- ment. Because the schoolhouse, like his own voyage, has been a protest against popular ignorance and has done moro than anything else to make our free America what it is, 1t would have lowered above everything else in that mirage-ike vision of the worlds progress.
 The public school celebration on Co., lumbus day is to be commended, there fore, not only as a unique method of diffusing among local centers of Ameri- can life from Plymouth Rock to the Golden Gate the significance and spirit of memorable anniversary, but also as | a practical expedient for emphasizing the value of the most characteristic of national institutions, the free school When the new world was discovered by Columbus, Spain was the greatest power in Europe, and England was an obscure and petty state. During the first cen tury after the landing on San Salvador a great Spanish empire was founded stretching from the gulf of Mexico to Patagonia. Slowly and laboriously the English-speaking race obtained foot hold in North America. Liberty was the breath of it's life and free education was its most precious bequest to suc- ceeding generations. The Spanish con- querors never opened free school. As time passed their empire revolted against them, and the constitutional forms of the English-speaking race in the north were roughly copied by one southern republic after another. Popu- lar education was neglected, as it had been under Spanish viceroys, and con- sequently the moral force of enlight- ened public opinion was lacking in the southern hemisphere. What has made the American republic the great power in modern civilization which it has been for a century is the free school system. Because it has given form and direction to American progress, the schoolhouse is a proper theater for celebrating the great event of October. If thirteen
 million public school children can be taught on that historic festival to value aright the inestimable benefits of free education, it will be a good augury for another century of more enlightened progress. ........