Arizona republican., 1912-09-23

1 nlllteu 10 TeIlldln III the service ana while discharging their duties to
 wear the garb. I concur in this view
 and the order as revoked will not | be revived
 1 "The secretary of the interior goes | into a very full discussion of the | whole history of the conditions sur l rounding the teaching in government 1 Indian schools. It is evident that at i first the government gave very little
 care or attention to the teaching of 1 Indians. and was quite willing to ac- | cept the services of any religious de- 1 nomjnatiOn engaged in missionary work which would take charge of the 1 education of Indians and give them | sectarian teaching, and we all should 1 be most grateful to those denomina- ! tiOns who were willing to spend the money and the effort not only to edu- 1 cate but to instill moral and religious l principles in the young Indians who l were wards of the government After time, however, it evidently became 1 the policy of the government itself to assume the burden of the educa- l tion of the Indians and to direct what It should consist in, and it is evil | dent from acts of congress that it was and is the settled intention of l congress that the general education of the Indians shall be secular and nonsectarian and that their religious instruction shall be separate and left to the volition of the Indians and to the care of the denominations to whose communion they belong. But in this transition state. in which the Indian youth are being transferred from Sectarian to government in StructiOn, the ultimate purpose has not always been strictly held in view, and it has been frequent method to transfer a whole school, previously under a Protestant or Catholic de- nomination. to government control, and to include, in the transfer, all the teachers who had been engaged | in this work in the Sectarian schools and to incorporate them as a whole and as individuals in the classified civil service of the government. The ! transfers thus have often been ef- fecteed by the governments renting denOminational schools and taking over the whole plant and the teachers as we'll It appears that out of 2OO0 l teachers in the Indian schools there
 
 and who are regularly classified mem- bers of the government civil service. | To direct them to give up their re- | ligiOus garb would necessarily cause | their leaving the service because of the vows under which they have as sumed that garb.
 The secretary of the interior holds,
 as matter of congressional policy. | that all orders hereafter made should | be directeed toward securing the se-
 cular and nonsectarian character of teaching; that this is the evident purpose of congress from it's legisla- ] tion. He holds. further, that the 1 wearing of a distinctive religious garb i is not, as claimed by some before ] him, violation of any constitutional | limitation in respect to religion, t.IIt l it does not violate the freedom If i religion; that it does not constitute an established religion: and it does not prevent or impair the s2par2tiOn ! of church and state. He s,istains l this view by reference to the author l ity of d Well-onsidered case decided l by the supreme court of Pennsyl- 1 vania. He therefore finds that to al | low the present members of the civil
 service who wear distinctive garb | to remain in the service until such | time as their service may end, either ! by resignation, separation for cause, | disability, or by death, is not forbid | den by existing law or statute, and
 that while the method of transfers
 was a mistaken one, the circum- stances surrounding them constitute an equity in favor of those who are now in the service and are wearing | the garb which should prevent their i being excluded from the service by 1 such an inhibition.
 l ''On the other hand, he finds that
 while the wearing Of the religious garb is not a violation of the con stitutiOnal limitations referred to,
 regulation forbidding the wearing of
 such a garb by teachers to be here 1 after appointed would be equitable,
 reasonable, and within the authority
 of the secretary of the interior to | prescribe. This conclusion he estab fishes by reference to two we'll con | sidered cases, one by the supreme
 court of Pennsylvania and the other 1 by the court of appeals of New York.
 In the exercise of his lawful discre- 1 t, 1 therefore. and in order more certainly
 to secure purely nonsectarian teach 1 ing in the schools. the evident object
 and airn of congressional legislation
 on the subject he believes it wiser { that hereafter no such transfers in
 solido of school plant and teachers
 of any denomination to the govern | ment school should be made, and that
 no set of teachers wearing distinctive | religious garb should be by order in 1 the future incorporated into the gov | ernment civil service of teachers. His | opinion is that. while it is neither
 unlawful nor impossible for teachers
 in a distinctly religious garb to do
 nonsectarian teaching, it makes as l between denominations interested
 that only secular teaching be given,
 for more apparent equality of treat
 ment not to increase or to add to | those now in the service who wear a
 religious and denOmnatiOnal garb. l Those representing the denomination
 of the teachers having religious garbs discaim any intention of submitting any more such teachers for examina- | ton as eligibles under the civil