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 SCHOOLS

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SCHOOLS

teaching would be more easily made as well as more effectively carried out through the co-operation of competent authorized representatives of the respec- tive teaching bodies. The system of diocesan organ- ization, as thus developed, consisted of a central board, with a superintendent of schools, and a board of community inspectors acting in conjunction with the superintendent in the inspection of schools and in the carrying out of the regulations of the board. In this form, the system has been adopted by other dio- ceses, and is gradually replacing the older or simple "board" system. Sixteen dioceses have at present introduced the "superintendent" system, while thirty-seven still adhere to the original "board" plan.

Financial Support. — Catholic parish schools are either "free" or "pay" schools. The latter are sup- ported by the tuition fees of the pupils, paid to the head of the school. Free schools are usually sup- ported by the parish treasury, although here and there schools are found whose expenses have been provided for, in whole or in part, by the endowment of some generous individual. The general tendency is towards free schools, and even where tuition fees are relied on, it is usually necessary for the parish to provide for part of tlie school's expense. Teachers generally receive from .S200 to .S300 per year if mem- bers of a sisterhood, and from S300 to $400 per year if members of a brotherhood. In several dioceses the salaries are higher than this, and within recent years a movement for the increase of teachers' salaries has been gaining ground. Lay teachers employed in the pari.sh schools receive but little more than religious. Generally speaking. Catholic teachers' salaries are less than one-half as much as the salaries of corre- sponding teachers in the public schools, and the actual cost of schooling under the Catholic system is only about one-third of what it is under the public school system. It has been estimated that the average an- nual per capita cost of parish school education in the United States is $8. This would mean that the edu- cation of the 1,237,251 pupils in the parish schools during the year 1909-10 cost approximately, for that year, .$9,898,008. The education of the same pupils in the public schools the same year would, according to the estimate referred to, cost approximately $30, .511,010; and if the annual interest on the neces- sary property investment were added, the total would be upwards of .$34,000,000 (American p]ccles. Review, XLIV, 530). This is, therefore, about the amount of money that the Catholic school system saves annu- ally to the States.

Catholic Schools and the State. — Catholic schools are thus, in general, entirely supported by the volun- tary contributions of Catholics. For a considerable period after the Revolution, however, Catholic schools in many places were, along with the schools of other denominations, supported from the public funds. This was the case in Lowell, Massachusetts, from 1835 to 1852. In the City of New York, it was also the case until the year 1824. The efforts of Bishop Hughes, in 1840 and subsequently, to restore this condition, were without the hoped-for success. Gradually, State after State framed laws forbidding the payment of public funds to denominational schools and many States even embodied such pro- visions in their con.stitutions. Several plans for avoiding the legal barriers that were thus raised against the attainment of their rights in the matter of the education of their children have been proposed and put to trial by Catholics, with the co-operation of their fair-minded non-Catholic fellow-citizens. One of the most celebrated of these was the "Pough- keepsie Plan", which was accepted by the public school board of Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1873. Under this plan, the school board rented the Catholic school buildings for a nominal sum, and accepted the

two Catholic schools of the place as public schools under the common regulations framed for the public schools, the Catholic teachers, who were nuns, con- tinuing as before and receiving their salaries from the board. The board agreed likewi.se to keep the school buildings in repair. The plan proved to be mutually satisfactory, and was continued for many years. Sub- stantially the same arrangement was made in several other places in the State of New York. The arrange- ment was discontinued at Poughkeepsie in 1899, only when the superintendent of public instruction intervened, and rendered a decision adverse to its constitutionality. At Lima, in the same state, a similar decision was rendered by the superintendent in 1902, and the appeal against this to the courts resulted finally in a judgment of the supreme court of the State, which sustained the action of the superin- tendent.

The famous "Faribault Plan" was an arrangement substantially the same as that at Poughkeepsie which Archbishop Ireland effected with the school boards of Faribault and Stillwater, in Minnesota, in 1891. There was considerable opposition on the part of Catholics, however, to such arrangements, one of the chief reasons being that religious instructions, under the agreement, had to be given outside of the regular school hours. An appeal to Rome in the Faribault case resulted in the decision "Tolerari potest", 21 April, 1892, which authorized the continuance of the arrangement under the specific circumstances. The controversy among Catholics had the effect of con- centrating public attention upon the matter, and of arousing slumbering anti-Catholic prejudice. The Faribault Plan is still in operation in some places; and in various parts of the country, especially in the west, where Catholic settlements are numerous, there are Catholic schools which derive their support from the public school boards. But such arrangements are purely local. In certain states, recent legal de- cisions authorize the attendance of pupils from the parish schools at the manual training classes in the public schools.

In connexion with these practical plans for the settlement of the "school question" there has been frequent discussion among Catholic educators and apologists as to the rights of the State in respect to education. Dr. Brown.son would deny to the State the right to educate, in the strict and proper sense of the term, although he conceded to it the right to establish and maintain pubhc schools. This was the view more generally held by American Cathohc educators. In the year 1891 the Rev. Thomas Bouquillon, D.D., professor of moral theology at the Cathohc University, Washington, issued a pamphlet in which he maintained that the State has the right to educate, in the sense that it has the right of "es- tablishing schools, appointing teachers, prescribing methods and programmes of study " ; and that "edu- cation belongs to men taken individually and collect- ively in legitimate association, to the family, to the state, to the church, to all four together, and not to any one of these four factors separately". These views aroused a storm of controversy which lasted for several years, and engaged the attention not only of Catholics in the United States but of the whole Catholic world. The efforts of Cardinal Satolli to settle the question by means of a series of fourteen propositions which he submitted to the board of archbishops at their meeting in New York, in the autumn of 1892, were futile; and the agitation sub- sided only when Pope Leo XIII addressed a letter to the American hierarchy through Cardinal Gibbons in May, 1893, in which, while appealing for the cessation of the controversy, he declared that the decrees of the Baltimore Councils were to be steadfastly observed in determining the attitude to be maint ained by Cath- ohcs in respect both to parish and to public schools.