Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1894-08-13
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE.
Freeland, August 10, 1894.

the uay Vi opening our borough schools,
will be an eventful day to teachers and
pupils. A thousand things will crowd
upon them at the same time and each
will demand prompt and judicious at
tention on their part. The children, to
the number Of 800, all will turn their
inquiring eyes to the teacher for occupa-
ton and direction. They will come full
of interest in the prospect of new things,
some ready to engage cheerfully in
whatever plans the teacher may have to
propose and dare say few others will
be prepared to turn up their little noses
at the new feature established, namely,
the introduction of sectarian bible into
the curriculum of our hitherto nom
sectarian common schools.
What ludicrous moment it will be
for one of the teachers when she reads
from that book of sectarian faith? What
a sense of incongruity will dawn upon
the minds of the pupils when they will
have eXpounded to them dogmas of faith
which she does not understand and what
folly it is for teachers to read to pupils
of things the expressed language of
which their little minds are utterly in
capable of comprehending.
When the directors made il manda-
tory on the part of the teachers to read
few lessons of the bible every morn
ing they wished no doubt to inculcate
into the minds of the pupils few moral
lessons. That is commendable. In
every school there should be real train
ing and pruning of character, but in this
city of Churches" where there are at
least twenty different expounders of
twenty different faiths, all learned men
who have spent years imhibing the dog
mas of their own religion, it becomes an
outrage on the community to suffer the
humiliation Of few directors to place
in our free common schools a certain
version of the bible and to be read and
explained, too, by incompetent preach
ers and theologians.
Many people believe and feel that
right moral guidance in the schoolroom
can only be had by direct didactc teach.
ing, by the learning of formularies of
faith and duty, and by lessons conscious
ly directed to the enforcement of theo-
logical truths. But some of the best
teachers in our vicinity, with no less pro-
found sense Of the importance of these
things, have grave doubts as to the use
fulness of lessons on the bible.
They distrust the practice of teaching
children in the sphere of religion to do
what they would not be asked to do in
any other department of their studies
to believe what they do not understand.
They dread, above all things, exacting
from young child VOWS or professions
which cannot possibly correspond to his
actual convictions and experience. Such
teachers would be disposed to RELY more
on the habits which were formed in
school, on the spirit in which its work
was done, on the sort of moral principles
which may be learned indirectly in a
high-toned school, and are seen to pene-
trate all its corporate life, than on formal
lessons from the bible.
The expediency of giving direct
religious instruction depends good deal
on the character of school, and the life
the scholar leads out of it. In board
ing school, where all the pupils are of
the same religion a teacher is bound to
provide for the religious instruction and
worship, both on Sunday and on other
days, which are used in a well-consti-
tuted Christian family. A teacher in
such case cannot leave out of view the
fact that many of the children come
from homes in which the name of God
is seldom heard, and in which tbe
parents feel it no part of their duty to
convey religious instruction to their
children or accompany them on Sunday
to the house of worship. The teacher
will feel here that the only glimpse the
scholar will have of the unseen world.
the only teaching about his relation to a
school. On the other hand, the Free
land schools are common schools, the
scholars have parents who are accus-
toned to concern themselves about the
religious training of their children; or
who deliberately object to the inculcation
of certain dogmas. In this case there is
no necessity for the bible. But, if these
directors demand its reading it is evil
dent that they would like to make the
schools propaganda for their own or
some other distinctive religious tenets.
These directors must not too hastily
conclude that school is a goddess
school, because for any reason no direct
didactic religious lessons are given in it.
Some of the weightiest lessons we can
learn in regard to the formation of our
own characters are not learned by way
of direct instructions, but they come to
US incidentally by seeing the conduct of
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