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The following paragraph is in the pending educational bill for England and Wales: "27. (1) One of the regulations in accordance with which a public elementary school is required to be conducted shall be that if the parents of a reasonable number of the scholars attending the school require that separate religious instruction be given to their children, the managers shall, so far as practicable, whether the religious instruction in the school is regulated by any trust deed, scheme, or other instrument or not, permit reasonable arrangements to be made for allowing such religious instruction to be given, and shall not be precluded from doing so by the provisions of any such deed, scheme, or instrument.

"(2) Any question which may arise under this section as to what is reasonable or practicable shall be determined by the education department, whose decision shall be final."

Sir John Gorst, in asking leave to introduce the bill, said: "Last year the voluntary schools educated 2,445,812 children, as against 1,879,218 educated in the board schools; or, to put the matter in a more popular form, of every seven children educated by the State, three were educated in board schools and four in the voluntary schools.

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"The Roman Catholics and a very large part of the members of the Church of England make it a point of conscience that their children should be educated by teachers of their own denominations, and it would be impossible to force those children out of their own schools into the board schools without being guilty of a piece of religious intolerance which the people of England in these enlightened days would never consent to."

On the second reading of the bill Mr. Gorst said:

"In our country, where we quarrel so much about religious matters, there is only one principle by which we can obtain peace in our schools, and that is by the recognition of the right of the parent to have his child brought up in the religion which he selects.

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"In the east end of London the London school board has most properly established Jewish schools, where the Jewish religion is taught by persons approved by the rabbi.” The bill represents the views of the party in power, but it is strongly opposed. In debate Mr. Asquith said of section 27, quoted above:

"I do not hesitate to describe that scheme as an endowment on a vast and unprecedented scale, out of public money, of a system of denominational teaching. The principle which has governed us hitherto in this matter has been this: Wo have two sets of schools. First, the board schools, entirely supported out of public resources, imperial and local. In those schools the teaching of any religious formulary or catechism is absolutely prohibited. We have another class of schools-denominational schools-which are largely supported out of the public funds. Yet, as in the view of the framers of the act of 1870, they were to continue to make substantial contributions of their own, they have given to them the power, while subject to a conscience clause, to teach any religious formulary they please. That is the compromise that was worked for twenty-five years. What occasion is there to disturb it?" The education grants were introduced in England in 1839. The following table shows, by denominations, the entire amounts granted to schools and the amount for 1895, as given in The School Master (England), April 18, 1896, in pounds,' disregarding shillings and pence for the last column:

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CURRENT DISCUSSION IN CANADA.

In Canada school questions are deeply stirring the people. It has long been the practice in Lower Canada, or Quebec, strongly Catholic, and furnishing most of the French-Canadian immigrants for New England, to have separate public schools for Protestants. In Upper Canada, or Ontario, Protestants are in the majority, and separate schools for Catholics or for Protestants have been allowed since 1863. In Manitoba the act of 1871 established separate schools. In 1890 the provincial legislature of Manitoba abolished separate schools, and there has been an active contest between the provincial and the Dominion authorities regarding their restoration. The Canadians expect some religions exercise in school, and "in part of Canada there is a State concession that any person liable to be taxed may, if he please, have the right to elect to support a denominational school, and be thereupon to a certain extent exempt from public rates."

The details of administration differ greatly in Great Britain, Canada, and the United States, but there is a coincidence of present agitation in all upon the relation of the state to religious instruction in general education.

CURRENT CONDITIONS IN THE UNITED STATES.

Matthew Arnold suggests an explanation why popular education in England was not equal to that of Germany and Holland:

"Perhaps one reason why in England our schools have not had the life and growth of the schools of Germany and Holland is to be found in the separation with us of the power of the Reformation and the power of the Renaissance. With us, too, the Reformation triumphed and got possession of our schools, but our leading reformers were not at the same time like those of Germany; the nation's leading spirits were there-the reformers; in England our best spirits-Shakespeare, Bacon, Spenser-were men of the Renaissance, not men of the Reformation, and our reformers were men of the second order. The reformation, therefore, getting hold of the schools in England was a very different force, a force far inferior in light, resources, and prospects to the reformation getting hold of the schools in Germany."

Would Matthew Arnold look upon the conditions in the United States as a natural perpetuation of English conditions? Horace Mann's comment on teachers in English schools of 1843, as to each following his own course, applies, more than most persons are aware, to our States and communities.

It must be observed that the United States as such has no general school system. There are certain features of public-school administration in which different States or different cities resemble one another, but one can not be too careful in stating the geographical limitations of his facts. Foreign and native educators have fallen into the way of taking the schools of Massachusetts as the type of schools in the United States without recognizing the differences that begin as soon as one crosses the State line.

The Government of the United States maintains special isolated schools, as the Military Academy, the Naval Academy, and the schools on Indian reservations, but the only geographical areas on which the nation takes charge of education are, directly, Alaska, where some 2,000 pupils are in schools administered, according to their varying conditions, by the Bureau of Education, and, indirectly, the District of Columbia, whose municipal laws are made by Congress. It is noteworthy that while many are denouncing as impracticable any plan for public schools of different sects or classes the District of Columbia, in common with all the States where the African race is prominent, has separate schools for whites and blacks, and even has a separate superintendent for the schools of each race, although all the schools are under the charge of one board and are supported without discrimination of funds.

Laishley, note.

2Schools and Universities on the Continent, p. 153.

This, therefore, in a peculiar thongh limited sense, is the national system of education in the United States.

Massachusetts.-Horace Mann was in a sense the apostle of the enlarged public school systems of the day, and the historian of the schools of Massachusetts as they were when he was connected with them. In his lecture 5, Historical View of Education, 1840, he says: "As educators, as friends and sustainers of the common school system, our great duty is to prepare these living and intelligent souls; to awaken the faculty of thought in all the children of the Commonwealth; to give them an inquiring, outlooking, forthgoing mind; to impart to them the greatest practicable amount of useful knowledge; to cultivate in them a sacred regard to truth; to keep them unspotted from the world—that is, uncontaminated by its vices; to train them up to the love of God and the love of man; to make the perfect example of Jesus Christ lovely in their eyes, and to give to all so much religious instruction as is compatible with the rights of others and with the genius of our Government, leaving to parents and guardians the direction, during their school-going days, of all special and peculiar instruction respecting politics and theology; and at last, when the children arrive at years of maturity, to commend them to that inviolable prerogative of private judgment and of self-direction, which in a Protestant and a republican country is the acknowledged birthright of every human being."

In his first annual report, dated January 1, 1838, Mr. Mann says:

"In regard to moral instruction, the condition of our public schools presents a singular and, to some extent at least, an alarming phenomenon. To prevent the school from being converted into an engine of religious proselytism, to debar successive teachers in the same school from successively inculcating hostile religious creeds, until the children should be alienated, not only from creeds but from religion itself, the statute of 1826 specially provided that no schoolbooks should be used in any of the public schools 'calculated to favor any particular religious sect or tenet.' The language of the Revised Statutes is slightly altered, but the sense remains the same. Probably no one would desire a repeal of this law while the danger impends which it was designed to repel."

He regrets that in all the libraries of books none have been found without a sectarian bias in favor of tenets or sects that puts them under the prohibition, so that there is an entire exclusion of religious teaching.

In his second annual report, dated December 26, 1838, Mr. Manu says:

"In my report of last year I exposed the alarming deficiency of moral and religious instruction then found to exist in our schools. That deficiency, in regard to religious instruction, could only be explained by supposing that school committees, whose duty it is to prescribe schoolbooks, had not found any books at once expository of the doctrines of revealed religion and also free from such advocacy of the 'tenets' of particular sects of Christians as brought them, in their opinion, within the scope of the legal prohibition. Of course, I shall not be here understood as referring to the Scriptures, as it is well known that they are used in almost all the schools, either as a devotional or as a reading book."

In his report for 1848 (twelfth annual) he uses 49 pages in the defense of unsectarian religious teaching in the schools and cities. He cites the eighth report (1841) of the State board of education as "a document said to be the ablest argument in favor of the use of the Bible in schools anywhere to be found." That document (p. 16) says: "The Bible has nothing in it of a sectarian character. All Christian sects regard it as the text-book of their faith."

In the report for 1818 he repels earnestly all representations that he has ever opposed its use. He points out how recent is the unsectarian freedom which he claims is represented by the use of the Bible without note or comment.

"It was not, indeed, until a very recent period that all vestige of legal penalty or coercion was obliterated from our statute book, and all sects and denominations were placed upon a footing of absolute equality in the eye of the law. Until the 9th day

of April, 1821, no person in Massachusetts was eligible to the office of governor, lieutenant-governor, or councilor, or to that of senator or representative in the general court, unless he would make oath to a belief in the particular form of religion adopted and sanctioned by the State. And until the 11th day of November, 1833, every citizen was taxable by the constitution and laws of the State for the support of the Protestant religion, whether he were a Protestant, a Catholic, or a believer in any other faith. Nor was it till the 10th day of March, 1827, that it was made unlawful to use the common schools of the State as the means of proselyting children to a belief in the doctrines of particular sects, whether their parents believed in those doctrines or not.

"The Bible is the acknowledged expositor of Christianity. In strictness, Christianity has no other authoritative expounder. This Bible is in our schools by common consent. Twelve years ago it was not in all the schools. Contrary to the genius of our Government, if not contrary to the express letter of the law, it had been used for sectarian purposes, to prove one sect to be right and others to be wrong. Hence it had been excluded from the schools of some towns by an express vote. But since the law and the reasons on which it is founded have been more fully explained and better understood, and since sectarian instruction has, to a great extent, ceased to be given, the Bible has been restored. I am not aware of the existence of a single town in the State in whose schools it is not now introduced, either by a direct vote of the school committee or by such general desire and acquiescence as supersede the necessity of a vote."

After saying that the State of Massachusetts as an alternative for the course pursued "might establish schools, but expressly exclude all religious instruction from them, making them merely schools for secular instruction," he says: "I do not suppose a man can be found in Massachusetts who would declare such a system to be his first choice."

Conditions in Massachusetts have changed but gradually in the last sixty years, though even there the views which Horace Mann held as the broadest, unsectarian liberality are not uniformly accepted as liberal enough for present conditions.

American Association for the Advancement of Education.-At the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Education in 1855 the retiring president, Prof. A. D. Bache, made some remarks upon a national university in which he referred to moral and religious education as the better part of the work. Thereupon the following resolution was offered:

“Resolved, That the sentiments expressed by our late president, Professor Bache, in his recent address, that moral and religious instruction should form a prominent part in all our systems of education, is in accordance with the firm belief and earnest convictions of this association."

This gave rise to a discussion as to the Bible and religion in public schools which occupied parts of three sessions and in which substitutes of similar purport were offered in the effort for a harmonious expression of opinion, all ended by laying the subject on the table. Prof. Charles Daviess, S. S. Randall, superintendent of public schools in the city of New York, Rev. Gorham D. Abbott, Prof. Alfred Greenleaf, Amos Perry, Caleb Mills, superintendent of public schools of Indiana, Gideon F. Thayer, Prof. E. A. Andrews, President Henry P. Tappan, of Michigan University, Prof. James N. McElligott, and others spoke with earnestness favoring such a resolution. Bishop Alonzo Potter, of the Protestant Episcopal Church, stood nearly alone in opposing it, Erastus C. Benedict supporting him in a degree. The Bishop spoke at great length, including the following sentences:

"The fact is that in this country the subject is surrounded by the greatest practical difficulties. Yet I think these difficulties are destined to be overcome, and we are in the way of overcoming them. If the question was distinctly at issue whether we should have schools with no Bible, no religious instruction in them, or no public schools at all, I would say that I would surrender the Bible. There are

other places where the Bible can be taught. Give me a place where the children shall be taught to be able to read the Bible, and I will take care that they shall read the Bible out of school, if they do not in school.

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"It is the proposition that in all schools the Bible should be daily read. I have no doubt that it ought to be read in all schools where it can be read without the sacrifice of an interest greater than that which you can gain from it. Suppose that the only teacher you have to fill the place is one who demonstrates by his daily life that he is godless, without the fear of God before his eyes, who can not help, by the process of unconscious tuition, proclaiming the fact in his school that he does not fear God, that he does not in his heart regard the Bible. Now, will that man perform the duty you would impose upon him by law in such a way as to promote reverence for the Scriptures, in such a way as to deepen in the hearts of those little ones the fear of God and the love of Christ? I say no. The whole process will be regarded by them not as a solemn mockery but as a farce. A worse impression upon the religious character and associations could not well be produced."

The incident is noteworthy for the date, 1855, over forty years ago; for the educational position of the speakers; for their representative position as Protestant citizens, and for accepting by the leading speaker one as a teacher who "does not fear God" or "in his heart regard the Bible."

New York. The first general act for the establishment of common schools in the State of New York was passed in the year 1812. In 1813 a supplementary act relating to the schools of the city of New York directed the payment of school moneys to such incorporated religious societies in said city as maintain charity schools. An act of 1822 gave funds for building schoolhouses to the Bethel Baptist Church, under which act gross abuses occurred, so that in 1824 an act was passed placing the selection of schools and institutions to receive public money in the common council of the city. This was held to exclude churches as such. In 1840, eight Catholic churches, a Jewish congregation, and a Scotch Presbyterian church petitioned the council for a share of the public money for schools under their care-the latter two basing their action on the report that a Catholic petition was to be presented. Remonstrances came in from the Public School Society, one from the Methodist Episcopal Church, with a contingent request that, if the moneys asked for were granted, a grant should also be made to restore a school formerly maintained by the Methodists.

In the remonstrances of the trustees of the Public School Society the distribution to churches for their schools is called: "Unconstitutional

that the community should be taxed to support an establishment in which sectarian dogmas are inculcated.

"Inexpedient, because the question was fully examined by the common council in 1822, and all the church schools, including the Catholics, which had previously drawn from the school fund were cut off, and the great principle of nonsectarianism adopted as the basis for subsequent appropriations from this fund."

Remonstrances from Reformed and Baptist churches and from citizens discussed various phases of the question. The petition for division was not granted.

The University of the State of New York has granted allowances from public funds to academies attaining its standards. In 1893 there were 69 undenominational, 22 Protestant, and 35 Catholic academies and academic departments that received such allowance. The constitution of 1894 prohibits the appropriation of public money to any institution under sectarian control. The regents of the university,' citing the Wisconsin decision that King James's version of the Bible is a sectarian book, state that they do not so consider it under conditions in New York. The parallels between practice in New York and English practice are evident, as well as the recent departure from English practice by cutting off from "Grants-in-aid" all schools that have a denominational character. A peculiar discrimination is likely

1 Report for 1893.

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