The Morning Star And Catholic Messenger

Public Schools.

No more fitting commentary could be made on the absurdity of intermeddling, on the part of government, with the education of children than the following, clipped from a recent number of the Times:
The Picayune joins in the complaint, long since made by this journal, that the public schools of this city have been "converted into nurseries of Republican politics." They are run entirely in the interests of radicalism, and have totally lost their value as educational institutions. To impose a general tax on the public for their support, as now conducted, is a gross violation of that republican principle which recognizes consent as the only legitimate basis of governmental authority. The special point of which our contemporary makes complaint, arises from recent changes in the corps of teachers in the Howard School. This school has, until recently, been conducted by four white ladies, but the educational powers-that-be have removed them and put the school under the charge of three colored girls, and have placed one scholarly white lady, long holding the rank of principal in our public schools, in the primary department, subject to the orders of this trio of dusky graces.
Such facts show that caste of the most disgusting kind is finding its way into our public schools. It is high time that the whole school question was remitted to the people.
We have often pointed out the result herein depicted, as naturally bound to flow from the organic defects of the system. It is admitted by the Picayune, the champion and admirer of that system, that the public schools have been "converted into nurseries of Republican politics," yet how often, and how vainly we have argued, that schools under government control would necessarily, sooner or later, be converted into political engines to make positions for party tools and to educate children with a bias towards the dominant faction!
The principle underlying the whole question, on the score of policy, is that the government cannot be supposed to take as earnest and unselfish an interest in the welfare of children as their own parents would. Men will not, from official duty be as scrupulous in securing the proper persons to take charge of the children of others, regardless of all questions except purely that of their advantage, as they will in the case of their own children.
We are willing to concede that there are many worthy citizens who have shown a laudable public spirit in this regard, but all are not so zealous, and even with good men the sense of duty might very often fail where love of offspring would stimulate to the most scrupulous care. Where this defective principle is not called into activity by a grave clashing of interests among different classes of the community, the evil may not become prominent for a long time, but as soon as there is an intestine commotion upon graver issues than those of mere policy, as soon as there is question of a form of government, for instance, and Imperialists, Royalists, and Republicans strive for mastery, as soon as labor struggles with capital, creed with creed or race with race for supremacy, the public school must sink into a mere party prize and become an arena of fierce contention.