Religious school

“ Some say religious instruction should be given in the home. This is usually done, in the intelligent christian home; but there are many homes, where it is impossible, and others indisposed. The fact that the church has seen, as if with a new vision, the method of Jesus, the Great Teacher of all men, reveals itself more clearly in the Sunday school, than in any other department of its work. There it attempts the task of religious education by instruction from the Bible, and endeavors to inspire the child, youth and man with the purest and greatest motives for action. ”

“ For it is in these schools, above all, that the children of the people ought to be carefully taught from their tender years the mysteries and precepts of our holy religion, and to be trained with diligence to piety, good morals, religion and civilization. In such schools religious teaching ought to have so leading a place in all that concerns education and instruction, that whatever else the children may [Pg 312] learn should appear subsidiary to it. ”

“ I have remarked on the strictly classical character of the school; but, after all, if one learns only one good thing well, one wishes to know others, and can teach one’s self. Then, classics have another advantage: Horace alone can make a gentleman. But what is more remarkable than all the other omissions in the school is, that the boys were never, individually, taught a word of religion. When it is remembered what a powerful influence the wealth of the clergy exercises, one must pause in wonder over the fact of religious teaching being a thing unknown. ”

“ The Catholic view of the school question is as clearly defined as it is well known. It rests upon the general ground that man is created for a supernatural end, and that the church is the divinely appointed agency to help him to attain his supreme destiny. If education is a training for completeness of life, its primary element is the religious, for complete life is life in God. Hence we may not assume an attitude toward the child, whether in the home, in the church, or in the school, which might imply that life apart from God could be anything else than broken and fragmentary. ”

“ If we may judge from a hasty inspection of classes, from the scope and skillful expression of thought in the graduating exercises, and from the testimony of teachers, a thorough and sufficiently extended education in all mental departments is given. Best of all, as the crown no less than the beginning of wisdom, the students, entering the school without special religious impressions, seldom leave it without becoming devoted Christians. ”

“ Education means much more than instruction; religious education means much more than instruction in religion. Many habitually think of an educational institution as necessarily a place where pupils sit at desks and teachers preside over classes, the teachers imparting information which is to be memorized by the pupils, so that, from this point of view, a Sunday school would be almost the only institution for the religious education of children in existence, because it is the only one exclusively devoted to imparting instruction to children in specifically religious subjects. ”

“ That in the Roman Catholic Church the literary and religious instruction of youth are universally combined, and that no system of education which separates them can be acceptable to the members of her communion; that the religious instruction of youth in Catholic schools is always conveyed by means of catachetical instruction, daily prayer, and the reading of religious books, wherein the Gospel morality is explained and inculcated ”

“ A great majority of the teachers of our common schools are professing Christians. Very many of them are among our most active Sabbath-school teachers. Now a truly godly man or woman, at the head of a school, though never speaking a word directly on the subject of religion, yet by the power of a silent, consistent example, exerts a continual Christian influence. In the second place, as a matter of fact, direct religious teaching is not entirely excluded from our public schools. I think, it by no means holds that prominent position in the course of study which it should hold. ”

“ Unless smaller cities and rural communities use the school building at times that do not interfere with recitations, they may be compelled to give up religious education. I understand that pupils not taking religious education usually are given other work of a secular nature within the schools. ”

“ Before therefore, attempting to enforce the duty, and to explain the methods of exerting religious influence in school, I thought proper, distinctly to state, with what restrictions, and within what limits, the work is to be done.
There are many teachers who profess to cherish the spirit, and to entertain the hopes of piety, who yet make no effort whatever to extend its influence to the hearts of their pupils. Others appeal sometimes to religious truth, merely to assist them in the government of the school. ”

“ We hold that a definite system of religious teaching, according to which the religious studies of the school and the secular are co-ordinate and equally regarded, and the religious atmosphere which such consideration implies, are of the very essence of a rightly ordered school; the ideal may be reached in a Voluntary School, it is impossible that it should be reached in a Board School; nevertheless, there may be Board schools and Board Schools; in some there may be simple secularism, and in others there may be a good religious spirit and fair religious teaching ”

“ The people at so early a day had not advanced so far as they have now, and did not dream of divorcing secular education from religion. The schools were intended to give both religious and secular education in their natural union, and there was no thought of the feasibility of separating what God had joined together. The Bible was read as a class-book, the catechism was taught as a regular school exercise, and the pastor of the parish visited the schools and instructed them in religion as often as he saw proper. ”

“ The former he must himself undertake in order to be able to live at all; the latter the Church undertook to supply to those who followed her teachings.
THE RISE OF THE VERNACULAR RELIGIOUS SCHOOL. For the first time in history, if we except the schools of the early Christian period, the Protestant Revolts created a demand for some form of an elementary religious school for all. The Protestant theory as to personal versus collective salvation involved as a consequence the idea of the education of all in the essentials of the Christian faith and doctrine. ”

“ Yet it should be evident that how things are taught, even things which have no direct relation with religious teaching, makes all the difference to the effect of an education. The teaching as a whole must be Catholic or non-Catholic. You cannot make a school which shall not be the one or the other, any more than you can make a home which shall not be the one or the other. ”

“ But, while the influence of the church has been constantly diminishing, many of the board members are ministers or priests and the inspectors come mostly from the clergy. Moreover, religious instruction forms part of the course in every school, although it is given at such an hour that any pupil may withdraw if the teaching is contrary to the faith in which he has been reared. The secondary schools are largely interdenominational, but in elementary education there are separate schools 377 for Catholics and Protestants, alike supported by the state. ”

“ The question whether or not religious education is compatible with Public School education, has been tried in all English-speaking countries, and in parts of Germany, with this result: that, a class, the Public School children are without any adequate religious knowledge or training. The clergy may have Sunday-schools, as they have, in all their churches; but what can children learn, in a few hours, of a subject which took three years from the Saviour of man to teach even to the apostles? ”

“ The religious work and tone of the school have, as always, been among the prominent and foremost forces, dominating and directing every other thought and resulting in a steady growth of character among the pupils of all grades and in the conscious and open choice of a goodly number of pupils of the life of faith ”

“ They can work most effectually for religious instruction themselves. Most of them are connected with the Church, and all the prestige and influence of the Church is brought to bear upon their religious tone, while the absence of all fetters upon the religious teaching should help it to greater definiteness and vigour. But besides this, their reflex action on the new schools is of at least equal importance. ”

“ Inspectors of elementary schools have been heard to say that, even in districts where the Catholic school was composed of the poorest and roughest elements, the manners were better than those of the well-to-do children in the neighbouring Council schools. They could not account for it, but we can; the precious hour of religious teaching for which we have had to fight so hard, influences the whole day and helps to create the "Catholic atmosphere" which in its own way tells perhaps more widely than the teaching. ”

“ Perhaps no teacher in a given school attains that ideal. But some teachers come nearer it than others. If our pupils are to hear the Good News so that their minds are enlightened and their hearts respond to the love of God and His Christ, if they are to be formed into vital, twentieth-century Christians, they should receive their religious instructions only from the very best teachers.
C. Inasmuch as the textbooks employed in religious instruction above the fifth grade require a high degree of catechetical preparation, religion should be a departmentalized subject in grade six through twelve. ”

“ Sunday schools, in which all the teachers are believers, and in which the Holy Scriptures are alone the foundation of instruction, are such only as the Institution assists with the supply of Bibles, Testaments, etc.; for we consider it unscriptural that any persons who do not profess to know the Lord themselves should be allowed to give religious instruction.
c. The Institution does not assist any adult school with the supply of Bibles, Testaments, spelling-books, etc., except the teachers are believers. ”

“ The pupils trained in these Colleges are not in general bound by any rule to accept posts only in Church schools; as a matter of fact, many are drafted into Board Schools; but it is impossible to exaggerate the importance to the subsequent influence for good, in a school of whatever kind, of a thorough religious training in youth upon definite religious principles. ”

“ One of the most important considerations relates to the moral effect of the school life and environment. We are committed in this country to the principle that the public school cannot teach religion, but this by no means relieves it of responsibility for moral character. ”

“ The past twenty years, however, have witnessed a great movement among the Protestant churches of America toward clearer aims and better methods in religious education. A situation had developed that bid fair to let religion drop out of the education of American children. Changed social, economic and industrial conditions had transferred to the school many of the educational functions once fulfilled by the home, and had wrought a change in the forms of family religion. ”

“ Sunday schools the country over have been graded, and here and there week-day schools of religion have been begun; problems of curriculum, method and organization have been studied and graded curricula devised; classes and schools for the training of teachers have been organized; and attempts of various sorts have been made to correlate public and religious education. Churches in general have come to see that they have an educational as well as a religious function in the community, and that there is a sense in which they share with the public school a common task. ”

“ The religious teaching occupies an hour (always at the beginning of the school hours) thrice a week, while special dogmatic instruction is imparted by the pastor, outside the school-house as a rule, or in a room specially set apart therein. The pastor is ex officio president of the Schulkommission, while the religious teaching in school is based on a special “school Bible,” containing short versions of the chief events in Bible history. ”

“ The children of every class of the population have equal access to these schools, and there is no compulsion upon the religious faith of any. Religious minorities in school municipalities have the alternative of separate schools, and attach considerable importance to this provision. Although what we should term religious instruction is not a part of the common school system, it is gratifying to know that both the Bible and Testament are read in a very large majority of these schools, and that the number where they are used is annually on the increase. ”

“ A growing appreciation of the inadequacy of the ordinary Sunday school has led to a movement for giving systematic instruction and training in religious education under church auspices at a time set apart by the school and for which school credit is given when it meets reasonable educational standards. The week-day school of religion is still in an experimental stage. ”

“ The religious work of the school has been well directed, although not a thing that could be put in figures. It is largely an endeavor to counteract the tendencies of ignorance and prejudice in the colored churches and so give free play to the spirit of grace. A large proportion of the students are professors of religion when they come. ”