Page:The Yankee and the Teuton in Wisconsin.djvu/135

 legislative hearing Senator Cashman denounced, by name, five well known and widely used textbooks.

If the Senator's historical views, as published in the Senate Journal under date of March 1, 1923, are intended to be made the platform in a campaign to purify the history teaching of our schools, the upshot may prove widely different from what is now anticipated; for among those views, the derivation of which is not indicated, are some which it would be difficult to find expressed in any existing textbook. For example, Senator Cashman holds that our country is indebted to Holland "for town and county representation in a legislature." Americans have long been taught that, in the picturesque phrase of John Fiske, "self-government broke out in Virginia" in 1619 by reason of the fact that these people were English. We are aware of no investigations which have brought forth evidence compelling the abandonment of that view, though some very extravagant claims have been made for the Dutch influence upon both colonial politics and colonial education. He also holds that "our free public school system came from Prussia." If by this were meant merely that Prussian influence has been felt in the creation of a system of state supervision of education, and in the strengthening of a school system already in existence, we would gladly concur. But the statement is too sweeping to admit of such an interpretation. Wisconsin Germans ought to be very glad to assign to New England colonies and states the chief influence in giving us the public school system because, in the present state of research, that appears to be where the credit belongs. To all that the Senator says about the selection of immigrants for America, the development in the colonies themselves of a new and vivid love of liberty which found expression in the Declaration of Independence, the stupid tyranny of George III, and the heroic sufferings and achievements of patriots in the Revolution, we utter a