The Pope and Education

...Thomas H. Briggs, of Teachers' College, Columbia University, who averred that all "private schools"-that is, schools to which well-to-do parents send their children-ought to be abolished...

...Briggs is not too well pleased with public schools either...

...All this seems relatively clear...

...A vast amount of dogmatizing has been indulged in, by reactionary cranks and equally cranky rebels...

...Sometimes, however (notably in Russia) the state claims a monopoly, absolute and unwarranted...

...We believe, as a consequence, that existing educational institutionalism is open to criticism from both Catholic and American points of view...

...This question cannot be answered, owing to the complete absence of statistics...

...It is impossible, therefore, that modern school method can be determined a priori or suffered to remain merely traditional...

...Pope Pius declares, for instance, that the Church is constantly ready to come to an understanding with civil authorities if difficulties should arise, and the several concordats are so many illustrations of this principle...

...When, for instance, the Pope declares that every child possesses the right to be taught dogmas which "are the pillar and foundation of all truth," people whose education has been a matter of confronting hypotheses constantly subject to renewed scrutiny are led to feel that the statement is necessarily untenable...

...and the statement is as plain to all the faithful as their very noses...

...This may be defined as training the child for right living...

...But the rest of the world, if we may judge by published comment, finds it either unintelligible or dangerous...

...but it has nothing to do with purpose...

...It will not function perfectly unless these are present in rightly established harmony...

...Regarding this Catholic and, of course, papal teaching declares that authority is threefold, belonging to the Church, the state and the family...

...Similarly a child will hardly develop into a useful member of society if he is taught in accordance with the assumption that he is a law unto himself...

...Let us take the first...

...Is this not a denial of the theory upon which public school education is based...

...Ultimately, however, his proposal rests upon the premise that the community alone has the key to improvement of the entire school system...

...As several court decisions have also proved, Americanism is likewise profoundly cognizant of parents' rights in this important domain...

...If other churches were to make like claim-that is, that 'the educative mission belongs preeminently to them for their children-and were to lay like inhibitions, the very foundations of the republic would be disturbed," declares the New York Times...

...But the tendency of a certain kind of present-day intelligence, sceptical almost to the verge of agnosticism, is to be shocked by what seem the "old-fashioned assumptions" of Catholic belief...

...It is now popular to ask, for example, if the products of parochial schools are found to be morally better than the products of public schools...

...And we hold that the proper way to coordinate everything we in America are doing to rear children intelligently and benignantly is to develop, inside a reconstituted public-school system, interlocking denominational schools conducted in accordance with the best modern practice...

...What...

...But they do not understand how the Church can figure prominently in the enterprise...

...And when the encyclical goes on to remark, "We, therefore, confirm our previous declarations and canons forbidding Catholic children to attend anti-Catholic, neutral or mixed schools, by the latter being meant those schools open equally to Catholics or non-Catholics alike," the puzzle becomes still more annoying...

...That the public school in turn has no room for either the Catholic or the Protestant educational purpose is, on the other hand, as evident as the ice of a glacier...

...If that be "disturbing the foundations of the nation," we are willing that they should be rocked...

...Great progress has been made in the knack of schoolmastering, and the several sciences and arts are gardens in which many new plants have flourished...

...The Sovereign Pontiff says that "it is evident that both by right and in fact the educative mission belongs preeminently to the Church...

...Indeed, the willingness of the Pope to accept it and the background of American circumstance is demonstrated by the emphasis laid upon the decision of the Supreme Court in the Oregon School Case, which averred that the child is not the mere creature of the state...

...If naturalistic methods assume that a youngster is an animal who needs only to be trained in the art of obeying his instincts, it is impossible that the product should ever be a virile member of the Church...

...Meanwhile it is as certain as anything can be that the solution of the Catholic educational problem which is embodied in the parochial school system of the United States has not been altered in the slightest degree by the new encyclical...

...He denounced them as reactionary and complacent, declared that they were hampering the scholastic progress of the nation, and that they were institutional denials of democratic standards...

...Or is it not, at least, a denial of the right of the community to dictate how its young people shall be prepared for citizenship ? Most Americans would, of course, agree with Pope Pius that the parents arc entitled to help fix upon the method by which their children shall be brought up...

...Again the family sometimes usurps the sole right, creating those "social centres" which have aroused the ire of Dr...

...It was this point of view, definitely identified with our whole past and tradition, which Pope Pius sought to recommend to other governments which are unfortunately bent upon subjugating the individual to the state with an entirety dangerous to society and religion...

...Against this usurpation canon law rules firmly, abjuring the use in the name of the Church of all in-quisitionalism...

...and it is against this that the new encyclical strongly protests...

...The Catholic ideal is this: prepare the child to be a virile son or daughter of the Church, a loyal and alert member of society and the best possible representative of family tradition...

...And if one now comes back to the Times comment, one wonders upon what fear the talk about disturbing the "foundations of the nation" is based...

...Briggs...

...The last two have a perfect right to insist upon their parts of the program...

...That is not a denial but an endorsement of Americanism, which honest patriotism may legitimately appreciate and which no baseless fear should cause anyone to overlook...

...In other words, it wishes to meet harmoniously the legitimate demands of ecclesiastical, civil and family authority...

...We go on now to educational purpose...

...The Catholic attitude toward method is, however, not at all dogmatic...

...And here one's definition of "right living" must be correct in itself, regardless of results...

...Indeed it would be wrong to expect originality of utterances which must always be restatements or clarifications of the universal doctrine of the Church...

...Of course Dr...

...Something of the same clear-cut divergence between the Catholic and the modern secular view enlivens all our current discussion of educational principle...

...Are we not all members of a civic community, destined to live side by side and work for the common interest...

...In drawing up a tentative reply to all this, one ought to bear in mind that there must be educational authority, educational purpose and educational method...

...And just the day before the encyclical appeared, educational circles were aflame with a controversy set in motion by Dr...

...It merely asserts that the manner in which children are taught must not conflict with the purpose for which they are taught...

...He is merely impatient with "educational chaos" and anxious to see some central plan and purpose...

...That parochial schools suffer a little from their present social and economic isolation we shall cheerfully concede...

...It cannot be too frequently asserted that our government joined respect for freedom of belief with a respect for belief itself...

...This conviction reposes in turn upon the historical circumstance that all education in early America was religious in character, the change to secularism resulting from inability to correlate divergent creeds within one system...

...When we come to method, we arrive of course at the most relative, the least permanent, aspect of education...

...Pope Pius specifically upholds every part of the threefold authority, but insists that reason and social welfare both demand recognition of the truth that the eternal needs of the spirit take precedence over any immediate, temporal necessities...

...And while the public school has sometimes veered from one conception of social training to another, its development has been due, in part at least, to the conviction of Protestant groups that it could stress moral teaching which is a necessary corollary of religious doctrine...

...Occasionally also ecclesiastical authority has been autocratic, using force to compel the obedience of children to it...