Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/573

Rh to see that the account given by our contemporary—presuming it to be correct—of the views of the several classes mentioned bears out the statement that these classes are persistently assaulting the graded school system. So long as the school system belongs to the domain of politics, as it does, so long will it be open to criticism from any and every quarter. The humblest individual in the community has a right to express his opinion as to how public money should or should not be spent; but we are not cognizant of any efforts that are being made to undermine the "graded" system as such. That it is desirable to have educational institutions of every grade, from the lowest to the highest, no sensible person is likely to deny; though some might raise the question as to whether enforced taxation is the proper means of obtaining funds for certain kinds of education. If our contemporary thinks that even to raise such a question is to show hostility to the cause of education, we must beg leave to differ from him. Time was when no one could imagine that anybody not a foe to religion could propose to sever church from state; but at present the great majority, in this country at least, hold that the severance is decidedly in the interest of religion. It may be said to be all but universally agreed that people are quite able to provide themselves with religion without any help from the state; and, moreover, that the article they provide for themselves is likely to be a considerable improvement on what the state has ever doled out. Well, it may require a far greater stretch of radicalism to hold that people could also provide themselves with intellectual enlightenment without state assistance; but we are not prepared to say that he who takes up this position is necessarily either a "crank" or an enemy of society. The fact is, that the article from which we have quoted betrays just a soupçon of the bureaucratic spirit which naturally develops itself in connection with all state management. Those who control the schools in the name of "the whole people" do not like the clergy to have any special views of their own in regard to the moral aspects of public-school education. They do not relish the criticisms of "scientists, scholars, and literary people" who venture to find the educational machine rather too much of a machine, and its work slightly wanting in organic variety. They want to be allowed to run the machine in the way most convenient to themselves and most favorable to large visible results. We do not question for a moment that much of sincere endeavor after the best results accompanies the administration of the official system; but we do mean that, in every official system, the official or bureaucratic spirit is a constantly growing force, and must tend to a stereotyping of methods and to a more or less barren uniformity in the minds molded under its influence. The time may come when it will be seen to be as much in the interest of true intellectual liberty that education should be freed from state trammels as it is now seen to be in the interest of religious liberty that the state should abstain from interference in the spiritual concerns of the people. Meantime it is a clear sign of the development of the bureaucratic spirit in connection with education when criticism from any quarter is looked on with an evil eye, and when "scientists, scholars, and literary people," and all others who have any special views of their own on the subject, are more or less politely warned off the premises.

is little need of evidence to show the popularity of war, yet the reprobation it meets with from the growing moral sense of the world sometimes puts its advocates upon strange defenses of it. Though always a dire