The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1907-03-09
EDUCATIONAL FANTASMS.


! A few days ago one of our morning contempo-
raries published an illustrated graduating SCALE
beginning with highly paid manager and descend
| ing through ladder of floor walkers, artisans and
tradesmen till it reached and ended with an I'M
fortunate and miserably diminutve public school
i teacher. 1t direct appeal to the pockets of
the rate payers an illustrated lesson on generosity
addressed to the Board of Education, and, while
not altogether fair well meant Although the
salaries of teachers, when compared with the wages
of mechanics are not high, we must NOT forget that
conditions make for the adjustment settlement
of salaries and wages No people in the world are
better seized of the idea that educated citizens
the greatest asset of a nation than is the United
States. In no land are more costly experiments
made and in no country the great educationists
more in touch with the daily life of the people.
From these and other reasons we have right to
expect country to be not only of the worlds
leaders in education but to be in position to of
fer to the world at large permanent example of
shobriety, morality and clean living. If the end
of education be the formation of character and
cultivation of high order of citizenship it can
not be said with truth that our educational system
has "made good" Three weeks ago there appeared
in this paper remarkable letter, addressed to the
editor by the well-known author and traveller, Mr..
Hubert Larkin Mr.. Larkin is no pessimist, but
his reference to the partial failure of system
of education judged by results is very dishearten
ing His citations and conclusions will bear repe-
tition: "a few years ago." he writes, ut was the
vogue among native Americans to lay at the porch
of ignorance and illiteracy the bundle of crime
and outrage which disgraced our nation. It was
very consolatory to the heart of the native Ameri
can to fondle this delusion We began to increase
our schools, to make education compulsory and
free, to erect in every town and village high
school or collegiate institute and to construct in
every state of the union not one but many uni
versities. Education became and is now ma
tional mania impelling the commonwealth to erect
INTELLECTUALLY great buildings pay envable sal
aries to professors and teachers, and lavish money
with a profuson and generosity bordering on
prodigality. No people made greater sacri-
fees behalf of education on behalf of great ex
pectations; no people were ever more sincere and
honest in the hope that, as education became diff
fused among the masses and the intellect of the
richer class developed to a higher level, crime
would diminish, the physique of the people improve
and public and private morals become at least re-
spectacle.
Alas for human hopes During the past five
years $4,000 human beings we're murdered in the
United States. More persons were foully done to
death last year than died from typhoid fever. In
these five years 100000 young men and women,
who, with clasped and loving hands, made, each to
each, the sacramenta promise of welded life, have
a public court have branded each other as liars
drunkards aduterers. An army of unfortunate
children, the harvest of these wretched alliances is
growing up in our midst, without moral or relig-
ious training. The departmental stores offices and
factories of large cities are crowded with di-
vorced girls and women, too many of them supple
menting their wages by gratuities from shameful
alliances
In our state prisons there are now, according
to the latest returns 5000 bank presidents, bank
managers, doctors lawyers clergymen, teachers,
professors, accountants and bank clerks, and all
this Notwithstanding that in nine out of ten,
declares Judge Marcus Kavanagh, the criminals
escape conviction. What then must be the number
of those who ought to be in the penitentiary and
are not! At banquet given in the Great North
ern hotel, Chicago, last November the same judge
was by invitation, the speaker of the evening In
the course of his address he said: "The United
States is the most criminal country in the world,
the Jury system the most loose and antiquated."
So there you are. The fact is our boasted edu-
cational system is pagan, not Christian. 1t was
the Duke of Wellington who, in answer to an adj
dress and reception rendered him by the University
of Oxford, after his return to England from the