Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/501

 SOCIAL CONTROL 485

mein Sache auf nichts gestellt." But, in truth, these Cassandras see only a part of what is going on. The ebb of religion is only half a fact, the other half is the high tide of education. While the priest is leaving the civil service the schoolmaster is coming in. As the state shakes itself loose from the church it reaches out for the school. Step by step with disestablishment of religion proceeds the establishment of education ; so that today the moneys, public or private, set apart for schools and univer- sities far surpass the mediaeval endowments of abbeys and sees.

Meanwhile we are in the era of educational monstrosities born of the unnatural union of church and school. In the countries where the state has founded the elementary school every conceivable compromise between the old and the new can be found. We find religious instruction given as part of the regular curriculum ; given during school hours, but by an out- sider ; given outside of school hours, but within the school building; given apart from the school, but paid for with school funds. In quantity likewise there is every gradation. We find religious instruction ad libitum; instruction in stated subjects, such as Bible, catechism, and sacred history ; instruction solely in the Bible; no formal instruction, but simply religious exer- cises ; no exercise save the reading of the Bible without com- ment. We find state-aided church schools, elementary public schools with compulsory religious instruction, religious instruc- tion save at special request, religious instruction only at special request. What are these but so many stages in the emergence of the chick from the shell ? The fact that there are all these stations on the road to emancipation, and the fact that the school, having reached one station, never goes back to an earlier one, are of profound significance. They reveal, underneath the medley of systems, an almost world-wide drift from religion toward education as the method of indirect social restraint.

This is not all. In most cases the teaching in the common school has been given an intellectual bias, not because anybody demanded it, but because the sects, in their mutual jealousy, have gradually canceled out of public education nearly every atom of religious instruction. That this has come more by