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