In the meantime, let them protest against the extravagance of educational enthusiasts and excessive State paternalism.  Let them ask that the burden of culture studies be put where it belongs, that is, on the shoulders of those who are the sole beneficiaries; and that free popular education be made popular, that is, for all, and not for an elite of society.  The public school system was called into existence to do one work, namely, to educate the masses:  it was never intended to furnish a college education for the benefit of the rich men’s sons at the expense of the poor.  As it stands to-day, it is an unadulterated extravagance.

CHAPTER LXIII.  GODLESS EDUCATION.

The other defect, respecting education as found in the public schools of the land, is that it leaves the soul out of all consideration and relegates the idea of God to a background of silent contempt.  On this subject we can do no better than quote wisdom from the Fathers of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore.

“Few, if any, will deny that a sound civilization must depend upon sound popular education.”  But education, in order to be sound and to produce “beneficial results, must develop what is best in man, and make him not only clever, but good.  A one-sided education will develop a one-sided life; and such a life will surely topple over, and so will every social system that is built up of such lives.  True civilization requires that not only the physical and intellectual, but also the moral and religious, well-being of the people should be improved, and at least with equal care.

“It cannot be desirable or advantageous that religion should be excluded from the school.  On the contrary, it ought to be there one of the chief agencies for moulding the young life to all that is true and virtuous, and holy.  To shut religion out of the school, and keep it for home and the Church, is, logically, to train up a generation that will consider religion good for home and the Church, but not for the practical business of real life.  A life is not dwarfed, but ennobled, by being lived in the presence of God.

“The avowed enemies of Christianity in some European countries are banishing religion from the schools (they have done it since) in order to eliminate it gradually from among the people.  In this they are logical.  Take away religion from the school, and you take it away from the people.  Take it away from the people, and morality will soon follow; morality gone, even their physical condition will ere long degenerate into corruption which breeds decrepitude, while their intellectual attainments would only serve as a light to guide them to deeper depths of vice and ruin.  A civilization without religion would be a civilization of ’the struggle for existence, and the survival of the fittest,’ in which cunning and strength would become the substitutes for principle, virtue, conscience and duty.”