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from general taxation to public and private schools alike. This would enable Episcopalians, let us say, or Roman Catholics, or Jews, when in any community they are numerous enough to provide a sufficiency of scholars for any primary, grammar, or high school, to establish such a school in as close a relationship to their own religion as they desired, and have this school maintained out of the funds of the city. This is not a purely theoretical proposition; after an agitation lasting nearly half a century, Holland has this year put such a law in force. From every point of view we should do well to recognize this plan as both just and expedient. One virtue it would have, apart from those already noted, is the variation it would permit in curricula, text books, personnel and scholastic life as between one school and another. There is no more fatal error in education than that standardization which has recently become a fad and which finds its most mechanistic manifestation in France. Of course this need for the fortifying of education by religion is recognized even now, but the only plan devised for putting it into effect is one whereby various ministers of religion are allowed a certain brief period each week in which they may enter the public schools and give denominational instruction to those who desire their particular ministrations. This is one of the compromises, like the older method of Bible reading without commentary or exposition, which avails nothing and is apt to be worse than frank and avowed secularism. It is putting religion on exactly the same plane as analytical chemistry, psychoanalysis or salesmanship, (the latter I am told is about to be introduced in the Massachusetts high schools) or any other "elective," whereas if it is to have any value whatever it must be an ever-present force permeating the curriculum, the minds of the teachers, and the school life from end to end, and there is no way in which this can be accomplished except by a policy that will permit the maintenance of schools under religious domination at the expense of the state, provided they comply with certain purely educational requirements established and enforced by the state. I have already pointed out what seems to me the desirability of a considerable variation between the curriculum of one school and another. This would be possible and probably certain under the scheme proposed, but barring this, it is surely an open question w
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