The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1915-07-10
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EDUCATION AND THE STATE.

being necessary to good government
and the happiness of mankind,
schools and the means of education
shall be forever encouraged"
Unfortunately this sound and
wholesome view that was taken by
the State and the general body of
the citizens as to the need and value
of religion in system of education
was slowly but thoroughly modified
In it's place came the opinion that,
as the State must maintain a neutral
attitude towards all citizens, religious
teaching should be eliminated from
the schools of the State; that relig-
ious doctrines should be relegated to
the Church and the home; and that
morality, something different and
separate from religion, should be
taught. In the carrying out of this
policy the State schools, disclaiming
all responsibility for the intoxicating
of religious truth, have become purely
SECULAR in curriculum, in textbooks
and in spirit.
3. The civil authority has extend
ed the activities of the school into
those spheres of responsibility that
were deemed wholly under parental
and home authority. The school to-
day having eliminated the element of
religious interest that dominated an
earlier period, takes cognizance, not
only of the moral and intellectual life
of the child, but also of his physical
health and his social amusements.
Medical inspection of schools, medi-
cal examination and treatment of
children, school nurses, home visitors
in the employ of the State, who bring
the home and school into closer con-
tact, schools as social centerS, Voca-
tional schools, meals for children who
are poor, free dispensaries for eye
and teeth ailments-all reveal the
radical departure from an educational
programme which, generation ago,
provided, as the essentials of an edu-
cation by the State, the teaching of
the three Rs.
Mention is here made of these func-
| lions which the school of today is
discharging, not in spirit of hostil-
| ity or criticism, but simply to record
what is welEknown fact, though it
is but proper to state that public
opinion is by no means agreed that,
in the final summing up, the pater-
nalistic policy into which the State
is drifting today, of doing for the
child that which parents ought to do
for him, may not react disastrously
upon the moral, civic and family life
of the nation. Says one of the ablest
and sanest of the non-Catholic social
workers: "The best and most an
cient institution for the care and edu-
cation of children is the family | am
in entire sympathy with those who
hold that changes in modern indus
try and the removal of many indus
reorganization of the school neces-
sary.
A. The last change in State edu-
cation, ant one which has not yet
reached it's final form, is the attitude
of the State towards private schools.
The State has always allowed liberty
of education in America, and, in sin
gular instances, has aided by subsi-
dies various private schools. But as
the State systems of education have
become more highly organized, even
this attitude of sympathy ON the part
of the State towards private schools
has lost some of it's kindness and
friendliness. Today, signs are not
wanting which indicate tendency on
the part of the State, not indeed to
destroy liberty of teaching, but to
modify the civil authority's passive
or Indifferent attitude towards pri-
yate schools, to extend it's jurisdic-
ton in matters educational, and to
bring it to bear more fully upon pri-
vate schools and take away some of
the so-called privileges these schools
enjoy.
The causes which have contributed
to the development of this tendency
on the part of the State to readjust
its traditional policies towards pri-
vate educational institutions find their
origin in anti-Catholic prejudices, in
anti Christian beliefs that the State
should be supreme in education, and,
finally, in certain convictions that are
not professedly either anti-Catholic or
anti-C Christian. There can be little
doubt that antipathy to the Catholic
Church, antipathy which, alas, still
survives in this twentieth century, has
reacted upon the educational policy of
the State. Those who are hostile to
the Church and distrustful of her
power look askance at her educational
activities. Hence in the hope of
checking her progress and neutraliz-
ing her influence they have given en-
couragement to every tendency that
looks to the engagements of the
States power in education and the
restriction of private school systems.
1t is quite probable that, if the
Catholic Church in the United States
had remained the weak and insignifi-
cant organization that she was before
the great immigration from Europe,
the system of public schools would
not have had its extraordinary deyeI
opment. On the same hypothesis, it
is likewise probable that many Prot
estant denominations would have
established their own UNCONVENTIONAL
schools and would be receiving from
the civil authority today whatever
help was wanted for educational pur-
poses.