When a Book Is Not a Book
WHEN A BOOK IS NOT A BOOK "DUBL1C controversy regarding Modern History, by *¦ Professors Hayes and Moon, has not been the least among recent conflagrations. It has, as a matter of fact, raised...
...If this point has now grown clearer, we may all have profited in spite of ugly animus...
...However all this may be, the fact remains that religion is forced out of the schools by practical circumstances...
...Only so can the clash between views be resolved without undermining the truth by which we live...
...Why was not the book submitted to a jury of eminent historians, representing all beliefs and persuasions ? Or for what reason was the teaching body itself not invited to review the matter...
...The charge against Modern History resolves itself into a conviction that the book "made propaganda for the Catholic point of view...
...Vitally necessary, imperatively needed if Christianity is to endure in this country, is some realignment of the educational system which will give free scope to denominational training...
...Now we hold that such an educational attitude cannot be accepted by any form of Christianity whatsoever, if it wishes to conserve even a vestige of its teaching mission or its respect for truth...
...Campbell got panicky and acted with undue haste...
...Nor would it help much to show how carefully the authors have qualified their generalizations, so as to ignore no pertinent event...
...Haughwout were modified, he presented neither argument nor comment of any value...
...Haughwout's attention...
...Haughwout feels and thinks otherwise...
...Nevertheless it follows from the events that Mr...
...It has, as a matter of fact, raised so much smoke that the various considerations involved are now somewhat hard to disentangle...
...Here, then, is the obvious foundation for a wholly laicist treatment of the human past—indeed, for a wholly laicist treatment of all knowledge...
...The first is the criticism advanced by the Reverend Lefferd M. A. Haughwout, an Episcopal clergyman, and accepted by Acting Superintendent Harold G. Campbell as sufficient evidence on which to base a veto of the book...
...One might have supposed that the admission of these limitations would be less direct and immediate...
...But there are obvious consequences, to which we draw Dr...
...Haughwout has, at least, furnished more testimony in support of this plain fact...
...He does not like what the book has to say regarding the Protestant revolution, especially in its English phases...
...Campbell's office is not permitted to believe in academic, scientific or any other kind of freedom...
...Catholics have often been convinced that other textbooks conveyed Protestant attitudes or convictions...
...He engineered a ban upon one of the few definitely Christian resumes of general history written for American students by reputable scholars...
...Grant that things have come to such a pass that one clergyman speaking for a part of one religious group (for several other Episcopalian leaders have repudiated Dr...
...It follows also that the kind of criticism advanced against the Hayes-Moon book is the only kind of criticism which has plenty of elbow room...
...The second is the educational philosophy deduced from this action by a group of critics, including the New York Teachers' Union...
...Jewish citizens have even been known to protest against the introduction of Christmas material into high-school curricula...
...Haughwout objects to Modern History's declaration that the socialized mind of the middle-ages, during which the Catholic Church governed the destinies of the West, was superior in many ways to the nationalized and individualistic culture of present-day Europe...
...Finally, he is not at all international-minded...
...We believe there are two separate underlying facts...
...Haughwout's judgment) can prevent publicschool children from learning history in a given way, and it follows that Americans are trying to make the public school do something negatively which can only be achieved positively...
...It is very likely that Mr...
...He appears to us to have grown singularly chaotic in explaining his conduct...
...Beyond asserting that the book would be restored if the passages offensive to Dr...
...He is not arguing but expounding his faith...
...Campbell acquiesced so readily that the idea of submitting Dr Haughwout's complaint to the scrutiny of other historians cannot even have had time to flit through his mind...
...To him the criticism of modern conceptions of patriotism, as formulated so resolutely by Professor Hayes in particular, is "dangerous...
...It would be useless for us to reply to these assertions by saying to Dr...
...It follows that the only material wholly acceptable in theory would be material which either completely eliminated the factor of religion or reduced it to paltry dimensions...
...For how can the truths of the spirit be taught in silence...
...Haughwout that in some respects he has misunderstood history and that in other respects he has misunderstood Modern History...
...It seems to us that these two things are separate and that one cannot well be made to clear up the second...
...The issue is simply that Dr...
...Here we come to point number two...
...The public-school system has no greater weakness than that disputes of this character are inevitable inside it...
...How comes it then, you will ask, that a protest of this character is accepted at its face value by the New York City school board...
...Even the fact that contemporary critics so different in outlook and so remote from Catholic affiliations as Waldo Frank and T. S. Eliot have accepted the mediaeval-modern antithesis advanced by Messrs...
...This conflict is perennial and understandable...
...It could be settled only after long debate, if it were true that mankind is really amenable to reason...
...Indeed, Mr...
...Hayes and Moon would hardly influence him...
...And even though many such books existed, each might well be objectionable, if written honestly, to some one sect...
...No such thing as a "proper attitude toward textbooks" exists, or could exist, in a country where there is no unified cultural outlook...
...This foundation has been more and more completely taken for granted during recent years, despite the still prevalent assumption of Protestant groups that the public schools belong to them...
Vol. 12 • May 1930 • No. 3
