its own good time the opportunity to make a prominent and characteristic impression upon the nation. New England has done this, her best work, for all time. But such work leaves no individual or State exhausted and obsolete. Rather is it a perpetual inspiration at home, ever burning like a quenchless flame on the altar; inspiring to a more profound and broader conception of education itself; demanding of every new generation that intense and vital interest on the one theme whose faithful and persistent working out through the passing years will alone insure the perpetuity of that type of American society which shall become the normal school of freedom for all men in all lands around the world.

[Errata. Page 1542, paragraph 2, last sentence, should show that Ninian Edwards was Territorial governor of Illinois (1809-1818) and third governor of the State (18261830); also that his son Ninian W. Edwards was first State superintendent of instruction, 1854. Ninian Edwards died in 1833.]

CHAPTER XL.

PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS.'

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS,

Parochial schools, called also parish schools, have not been separately shown in previous reports of the Bureau of Education. It is therefore fitting to explain conditions relating to these schools with a fullness that would not otherwise be desirable. It will be the effort to make an unbiased statement of historical accuracy. As far as it can be conveniently done, the views of authorities cited will be given in their own language.

There is some difficulty in clearly defining parochial schools, owing to variation in the use of the term. For example, a number of denominations maintain schools for their children which some might consider parochial, with no violence to the general definition, and yet it might be very difficult to separate some of these maintained by congregations from kindred schools maintained by the denomination. It has been found more convenient to treat the schools of the Friends, for example, as private denominational schools, although their elementary departments and some elementary schools may closely correspond to the parochial schools of some other denominations.

Moravian parochial school.—A peculiar case is that of the Moravians at Bethlehem, Pa. Besides a theological seminary and a seminary for young ladies, there is a school, established in 1742, still known as the Moravian parochial school. It is maintained by the congregation. Religious instruction is regularly given. The pupils from Moravian families observe the holidays of the church. The school has expanded within a few years so that it embraces a full set of departments from kindergarten to classes fitting for college. The advanced classes are partly made up of tuition pupils without regard to residence or religious profession. The elementary departments correspond to what are popularly called parochial schools, while the advanced departments correspond somewhat to an academy or other preparatory school. This school is remarkable for the long record it has as a school of elementary religious instruction and for the steadiness with which it has been quietly held to its original purpose.

Some similar combinations of elementary and advanced religious instruction in care of congregations might be found in other denominations. Some denominations have devoted great attention to education without establishing distinctively elementary congregational schools for the inculcation of their tenets.

Parochial schools defined.—The term parochial or parish school as here used applies to elementary schools maintained by congregations for their children with particular reference to their religious instruction. Such schools are to be distinguished from institutions maintained by groups of churches, such as dioceses, presbyteries, synods, assemblies, conferences, associations, or denominations, or supported as missions.

THE GENERAL DEMAND FOR RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION.

Over all the world, wherever civilization has advanced to the establishment of schools of any sort, in any age, the prevailing religious system makes the study of truth as shown in the books deemed sacred the fundamental idea in education, if not directly, yet as the ultimate foundation.

1 By James H. Blodgett, A. M.

Hindoo boys repeat whole books of their sacred literature to their Brahman teachers, and the texts of the Koran are the fundamental teaching of such schools as are maintained by Mohammedans in India, western Asia, or northern Africa. From Mosaic times the Jews have made the religious instruction of children paramount. When the Christian religion grew out of the Jewish the same ideas as to the instruction of children were carried over into the new conditions. With a general agreement of purpose in this respect there is a wide diversity in the methods used, and parochial schools are not maintained by those who, aiming for a like result, deem other agencies in operation adequate for elementary purposes.

In the United States we have now many forms of religion, but only Jews and Christians of some name are in such numbers as to affect statistics noticeably.

The Jews.—The devout Jew is hardly less earnest than of old as to the importance of religious instruction of children. In the persecutions of the centuries much of this instruction was driven to the privacy of the home, and the organization of Jewish schools was so far forbidden, discouraged, or interrupted that the Jew has not brought a formal habit of parochial schools to this country. There are numerous classes on Saturday, or at hours outside ordinary school, for the special purpose of impressing the doctrines of Judaism, but they are carefully planned to avoid conflict with the appointments of the public schools of their vicinities. The Jews have also some schools reaching to maturer work and to trade education, in part of which, at least, it is required that candidates for their privileges shall have been in regular attendance at ordinary day schools. The Jew therefore does not have parochial schools in the United States.

Christians.-Those who accept the Christian Scriptures in this country are in the first analysis, by order of number, Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Latter-Day Saints, or Mormons. The latter people add another revelation to that of the Old and New Testament. They are principally found in Utah and adjacent regions. As a church they take a positive charge of the education of their children, and some of their elementary schools might not be easily distinguished from parochial schools, yet the term denominational schools seems more fitting under the circumstances. The secretary of the board of education of the Latter-Day Saints or Mormons reported at the Eleventh Census (1890) 5,092 pupils in schools ranging from elementary to superior, of whom 113 were in Arizona, 696 in Idaho, and 4,283 in Utah. Owing to their location their schools have attracted little national interest. In 1893 there were reported 637 Mormon teachers and 46,099 children of Mormon parents in the public schools of Utah.

The following statement of the Mormon position in education is from the circular of the Juab Stake Academy for 1894-95:

"The growth of infidelity among the young establishes the fact that without the introduction of religious principles the final object of all education, 'Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect,' as expressed by Christ, the greatest of all educators, can not be accomplished. It is also a fact equally demonstrated that the church school system of which this institution forms a part, remedies the growing tendency toward an unbelief in a divine creator.

"The following extract from a letter of President Woodruff of the general board, in which he urges the appointment of stake boards of education, voices the conclusion of every true Latter-Day Saint:

"We feel that the time has arrived when the proper education of our children should be taken in hand by us as a people. Religious training is practically excluded from the district schools. The perusal of books that we value as divine record is forbidden. Our children, if left to the training they receive in these schools, will grow up entirely ignorant of those principles of salvation for which the Latter-Day Saints have made so many sacrifices. To permit this condition of things to exist among us would be criminal. The desire is universally expressed by all thinking people in the Church that we should have schools wherein the Bible, the Book of

Mormon, and the Book of Doctrine and Covenants can be used as text-books, and where the principles of our religion may form a part of the teachings of the schools.' "The past years have proven that an academy based upon the principles of the everlasting gospel can be successfully run in this Stake of Zion."

Early conditions in the United States.-The Protestant settlers of New England had broken with a state church, yet had retained so much of the impressions of unity of church and state that at first citizenship and church membership, when not identical, were closely related, and religion was a dominant subject in founding schools of every degree from the humblest to Harvard College. The adherents of the state church who settled Virginia kept religion prominent in such educational work as they did.

For two centuries New England and the Virginias and States of like settlement were under the control of the descendants of the original settlers and those in sympathy with them. All the institutions in each group were in harmony with the leading religious sentiment. Religious instruction was dominant in some schools, prominent in many, and, generally speaking, tolerated in all. Louisiana and such portions of Spanish America as have been absorbed into the United States were strongly Roman Catholic, the States from Spanish America having been under Catholicism as a state religion till near 1825, and such schools as existed were strongly marked by a religious character. Maryland was settled by liberal English Catholics, but their controlling influence was soon disputed by adherents of the Protestant Episcopal, Established Church of England. As long as any portion of the country remained under the control of the views of the original settlers the religion of their preference was expected to be in their schools, though by lack of interest it often occurred that Protestant communities allowed the disuse of the Bible and religious exercises.

In early settlement Pennsylvania probably covered the greatest number of religious bodies that could not accept the tenets nor understand the language of one another. There were Swedish and German Lutherans, English Friends or Quakers, Dutch Mennonites, German Moravians, and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians.

From the organization of the Federal Government into the second quarter of this century the influence of foreign immigration was slow in its effects, and each State, or even a group of States, tended toward something of a homogenous religious sentiment, in accordance with which its schools were molded.

Public schools maintained by local taxation, as now existing in part of the nation, were almost unknown. Even near the end of the second quarter of the century Horace Mann said in his report upon the schools of Massachusetts for 1846: "There is not at the present time, with the exception of the States of New England and a few small communities elsewhere, a country or a State in Christendom which maintains a system of free schools for the education of its children. Even in the State of New York, with all its noble endowments, the schools are not free."

Effect of quickened immigration on school systems.—In this second quarter of the century an active immigration began to pour into the Northern States that has only varied and not ceased to this date. The digging of canals and a little later the construction of railroads induced Catholic laborers from Ireland to come by thousands and scatter among Protestant communities. The failure of their potato crop gave tremendous enlargement to the Irish emigration just before 1850. The revolutionary conditions of the continent greatly stimulated German emigration about the same time. The Germans were partly Catholic and partly Protestant Evangelical of Lutheran profession, each form recognized in the provisions for religion by the State in their native regions. Later came Scandinavian Lutherans, bred in a State church, often in numbers sufficient to form colonies and organize and maintain local institutions, as was true in a degree of Germans. Such German or Scandinavian colonies

Stake is the term used for a settlement by the Mormons.