The Republican journal., 1907-01-31
THE CHURCH AND SCHOOL.

Sunday, Jan. Goth, the topic of the sermon
of Rev. Ashley A. Smith, pastor of the. Uni
versalist church, was Goldsmith's Deserted
Village, and in the course of his address he
had this to say concerning the Importance
OF suitable and sanitary school buildings:
Allied to the church in our New England
communities is the school, AS one minis
tiers to the moral welfare of society, so the
school to the mental life of the community.
The good achieved by both is beyond all
human estimate. The schools of our re-
public have been the great unifying forces
of the nation. The children of countless
thousands of immigrants from the old Eu-
rOpean countries have been by these, mold
ed and trained toward the duties and priv
ileges of American citizenship. A child of
foreign parentage trained and educated in
our schools comes for tn good citizen.
The schools in the great cities are success
fully accomplishing this great work. The
children of poor and illiterate foreigners
are put to school and come out with a good
common school education. l may, perhaps,
be permitted to say in passing that the
child of the poorest illiterate Italian la
borer in Boston or New York or any other
city, is often housed in better school
building, more modern and commodious,
safer, more sanitary, better lighted and
better ventilated school building than we
give our boys and girls in this city of ours,
where the citizenship is largely native
American, and where l am constrained to
say our school buildings are outgrown and
archaic, a positive discredit and reproach to
us. Unsanitary, poorly ventilated, made
quately lighted, overcrowded; almost,
some of the rooms at least, breeding
places for epidemics and contagion. There
are plenty of much smaller towns in our
commonwealth of Maine that teach us sal
struction and appointment and deem no ex-
penSe too great to give their children the
best, not only in classroom instruction,
but in good, well ventilated, we'll light
ed, commodlous schoolhouseS. Our in
struction and teaching ability, believe
will compare favorably with any town of its
size In the State, not so however our build
ings and their equipment. Indeed the in
struction is seriously handicapped by these
poor facilities. Every citizen Of us should
investigate these matters, should study the
situation and conditions; visit the schools
and breath little of the air that our child
rem are compelled to breath, owing to poor
ventilation during their school hours;
thoughtfully consider and discuss and earn
esty agItate this question, until an adequate,
credltable and reputable school building
is erected over the way on that splendid
site in the heart of the city, that should not
longer enfeeble the health and impair the
energies of our children or interfere with
the work of instruction; building, in
short, that shall be an ornament to our city
and credit to our citizenship. There may
be some question, some difference OF opinion,
perhaps, of the best way and means of doing
this but of the need itself there can be little
aIn Of
country has justified itself long ago; its re-
suits have approved it. AS in the rural viii
lage of Goldsmith's day, so in our American
lie everywhere, the school teachers have
nodded our youth into citizens and patriots
of good quality. They have produced strong
cannot exhibit better fruitage of field or
factory than this fruit of our public school
system, strong, self-dependent manly and
womanly character. These teachers have
often been untiring, sacrificing laborers, as
much entitled to the word hero as any
to-day. All true national progress must
ultimately rest right here, in our schools.
For education and enlightenment must
be the seat and source of it. Ever
increasing Intelligence that, urely y, is
the soul of progress and that ever increasing
Intelligence must come from our public
schools. Ignorance means retrOgresSion,
decay, stagnation, death; education, in
telllgence means progression, growth, de-
velopment, life. Who shall estimate our
national debt to our public school teachers.
Not words or figures can measure it, They
have been the builders, the insprers,th
are the uncalendared saints, the uncanonized
martyrs and heroes of our Republic. And
yet as compared with the soldiers work
which is that of destruction, while theirs is
constr uctive, they have been unheraled aid
unapplauded They receive not the flower or
ribbon Wreathes, the martial music of bands
never greet them with triumphal acclaim.
And yet this great army of men and women
that teach day by day in our colleges and
schools is doing an imm rial WORK, be-
cause truth, which is their privilege and
prerogatave to teach, is eternal. know not
what sacred niche in heaven the Good
rather may have for any one of his children
but theirs, believe, shall be as fair and
beautiful as any of them. They after al.
have been the pioneers and leaders, the real
defenders of our liberties they have held
succeeding generations true to the best and
noblest things, to patriotism and good
citizenship, to truth and righteousness and
whatever may be their reward in any dis
tant heaven we have reaped abundant har-
vests of their sowing in the life and liberty,
the patriotism and progress of our republic