The daily Missourian. [volume] (Columbia, Mo.) 1916-1917, 1917-09-02
THE BEST LITERATURE

Among Missour1s EDITORS VINO
write editorials worth reading Will
liam Southern, Jr., OF the Independ-
ence Examiner holds high rank To
Mr.. Southern journalism is a profess
sion of public service and he uses his
excellent newspaper to promote good
citizenship. In recent issue Of the
Examiner appeared this editorial
upon a subject of large and increas-
ing interest:
THE best text book Of literature
and the most wonderful historical
record ever printed has no place in
the curriculum of the Missouri public
schools. The literature and the his
tory which enters more laI--Iy into
the practice of every learned prCtes-
sion, without a knowledge of which
no lawyer can be a successful advo-
cate. no physician can diagnose the
great mental forces which enter into
the life of every patient, no politician
can hold his own in debate or argu-
ment, no teacher can understand the
classics, no editor can reach an ef-
fective command of language, no
general can build the mental re-
sources which control an army, is left
to sectarian religious schools where
unframed teachers twist the tex; 20
suit their own particular inherited
theology.
1T is not required of graduate of
any college that a knowledge of the
Bible shall be part of the equipment
certified in his diploma. The scholar
must know Shakespeare, it is even
taught in the public schools, must
know something about Browning.
must be able to talk intelligently
about Cicero, must be on familiar
terms with Sir Isaac Newton and
even clutter up valuable brain space
with Bernard Shaw and Tolstoi, but
the Bible is lost book, an old-fash-
Toned superstition, a sort of a milk
toast diet to be drawn from a nippled
bottle by children and old men and
women who have lost their teeth.
1T is now possible under the law
for the Bible to be taught in the public
schools. Not as a sectarian religious
course. not even as a religious text
book. except as one religion may be
compared to another, but as the
greatest source of education found on
printed pages between bound covers.
Independence ought to have in the
high school course of Bible study
to be taught every year of the four, as
history or literature is taught and the
students given full credit for the
work. This can be done by order of
the Board of Education and certainly
there is no church or sect which |
would object to the teaching of the |
Book along such broad lines. If the
schools should attempt to teach |
Calvinism, Catholicism,
or any other ism, and at
tach it to the study of the Bible, we
would object as vigorously as possi-
BILE and declare that no school board
had right to spend public money for
Or to permit such teaching. But no
education is complete without a thor
ough knowledge of the Bible and no
school can claim to be giving even the
-udiments of an education without
attempting to impart knowledge of
he Book, which is printed in larger
numbers every year than any other
book, is translated into a greater
number OF languages, has a wider cir
;ulatiOn than any literature or phi
osophy, and which carries a wider
influence on the life of the peoples of
he world than all other sources of
combined"