1. The System of Public Education in the United States. Its Origin and Internal Character. Application of the Principle of Separation of Church and State in the Field of Public Education. Internal Contradiction and Inevitable Outcome. Elimination of Denominational Differences and Adoption of “General Christianity” in School. The Attitude Toward the Adopted System on the Part of Protestantism and Roman Catholicism

The system and organization of public education in the United States is essentially different from the system practiced in the states of the Old World. The difference consists not only in the setting of the matter, but in the very principle underlying it, and in the goals which it aims to achieve. In most European states, the basis of public education is placed religious instruction in its confessional or dogmatic coloration. In the United States, by contrast, the school has as its main goal the achievement of a certain degree of mental development necessary for the conscious discharge of the duties of a citizen in the spheres of political, social and family life. Religion, in its confessional sense, American schools do not recognize. Such a distinctive feature of American education is conditioned by the peculiarities of the structure of the state, social and religious life of the country and can be clarified from a brief survey of the history of the origin and development of the present system of school education.

The origin of the present system of public education, in its general form, goes back to the early period of settlement of the American continent by European settlers. The English settlers, the so-called “Pilgrim Fathers,” having settled on the new continent and freely breathed free from persecution, considered it their first duty to establish schools, where their children could learn to honor God in such purity and strictness as would fully correspond to their Puritan worldview. At first school education had a private character, but in 1647 it received in Massachusetts State, the birthplace of the entire present system of public education, an official definition which has since become the model for all other states. On November 11 of that year, the legislative assembly of Massachusetts State adopted and approved an ordinance which made public education a public matter, and defined its system in detail. By this ordinance, every town, whose population “the Lord had multiplied to fifty households,” was required to establish a school and appoint a teacher for it; and a town with a population of one hundred families or households was required to have, in addition, a “grammar school,” in which children could prepare for admission to a higher school or university[1]. The operation of this ordinance was binding on all colonies of Massachusetts under penalty of monetary fine[2]. In it are contained in embryo all the characteristics of the present system: local responsibility to the state for schools, free instruction, and the recognition of three degrees of schools, as they exist today. The school established in this way was in essence a parish school, since what in the ordinance is called a town (township) coincided with the parish. The parish, in its annual meeting, determined the amount of money needed to maintain the school for the following year, and it was collected through certain taxes and distributed under the supervision of an elected committee.

The internal character of the school founded in this way was entirely dependent on the environment in which the school itself arose. The Puritans, or more precisely the Congregationalists, were a deeply religious people. They knew no law other than the law of their religious conscience. When in 1620 the Pilgrims first drew near to the American continent, before stepping ashore they agreed among themselves to govern themselves by the laws of God, as inscribed in the Bible, until such time as circumstances would allow them to develop more specific laws adapted to their new situation[3]. But time itself had little influence on changing their original “social contract.” Subsequently, of course, more detailed and precise rules for communal life were developed, but at their foundation biblical law has always remained and continues to remain. To this day, public life in New England bears a rigorously religious character, which has been especially preserved in villages. The latter represent a remarkable example of religious communities, almost with theocratic government. Religiosity is the chief driving motive of their public life[4]. In such an environment, the school necessarily had to be religious. And indeed it was. The goal of the school was to provide religious and secular education in their organic unity, with the latter subordinated to the former, just as everything in the public life of the Puritans was subordinated to religious law. In school, the Bible was read first, the catechism was studied, the parish pastor visited school whenever he deemed it necessary, and taught the law of God. He was, one might say, the chief administrator of the school, and his voice, whether or not he was a member of the school committee, always had important weight in school management, in the appointment and dismissal of teachers[5]. Such an arrangement was not only called for by the internal peculiarities of the environment, but was also facilitated by the simplicity of public and state life. In New England lived only one people, having one religion, which was their common inheritance and was recognized as the established religion. There was no difference in denominations, and therefore no objections to religious instruction in the strictly confessional character of Congregationalism. Gradually, the school system adopted in Massachusetts spread to other states, and at first it could easily be adapted to the particular characteristics of their constitution and life. But soon the state underwent a transformation that gave new direction to its entire life and had a tremendous impact on the school system. This was the Declaration of Independence and the adoption of a new constitution.

One of the fundamental principles of the federal constitution of the United States is the separation of church and state. According to this principle, the church and state are recognized as completely separate spheres in human life, developing according to their own particular internal laws and pursuing their own particular objectives, in satisfaction of the special needs of human life. Before the Declaration of Independence, the colonies knew no such principle. In almost all of them, church and state were united; the state recognized or supported one particular denomination and persecuted others. In schools too, preference was given to the established denomination. Thus, the new constitution introduced a principle that was foreign to them. It proclaimed the principle of separation of church from state, and thereby refused to support any denomination at the expense of others. Having separated from the church, the state had to avoid relations with it in all spheres of its activity; but in some spheres the aims of church and state converge so closely that such separation proves difficult to implement. Public education the state considers to be its obligation, since it constitutes a necessary condition for its prosperity and successful development. But in recognizing it as its own responsibility, it here necessarily encounters religion, since religion enters essentially into upbringing and, in the view of the majority, the latter is unthinkable and undesirable without religion and cannot achieve its objectives. Thus, at the first attempt at practical application of the theory of separation of church from state, one encounters a difficult contradiction. According to principle the state should ignore religions in school; but in fact it cannot do so, unless it wishes to deprive the school of an essential part of that educational value which is in the interest of the state itself. The natural result was that the state of the United States made a concession from its principle and recognized religion as an element in the system of school education. But even this did not eliminate all difficulty. Religion is not merely a general abstract idea. It is at the same time a practical force, deeply penetrating into the internal and external life of people and society and taking various forms in the shape of different denominations and sects, some of which do not recognize, and often even exclude, others. According to the fundamental principle of the constitution, the state cannot give predominance to one of them at the expense of others; but according to the general principle of upbringing, it cannot completely eliminate them all from school. Thus, the state had only one way out—to develop such a common ground on which all diverse denominations could agree. The United States is a Christian state, and by the term religion in it is understood Christianity. But besides Christianity, there exist in it other religions that are difficult to reconcile with Christianity, for instance, Judaism, Mormonism, and others. If there existed only one Christian religion, although in diverse forms, then finding a common ground for them would be a simple matter: they all have the same general beliefs on which Christianity is founded, and restriction of religious instruction in school to these common beliefs would be a solution to the problem. In view of the difference not only of denominations but even of religions themselves, which exclude one another, the state faced a new dilemma, from which one can escape not by resolving it but, as one might say, by cutting through this Gordian knot of the dilemma. And it indeed cut through it, adopting as the common ground of religious instruction in school the general foundations of Christian religion in the form of Bible reading, study of common Christian prayers, and singing of common Christian sacred hymns.

The program of religious instruction in school thus developed gave it the character of what is called an “unsectarian school.” In it no preference is given to any one denomination at the expense of others; all are essentially excluded from the school, and from them is retained only what is their common possession, what is equally recognized by all denominations and sects, with the exception of course of anti-Christian religions. In practice, the religious element in school manifests itself in that before the beginning of each lesson a chapter from the Bible is read, common Christian prayers are sung, such as the “Lord’s Prayer,” and then during hours designated for study, sacred hymns used in church services are sung[6]. Different denominations and sects often do not agree in their interpretation of Holy Scripture. To avoid this difficulty, teachers are forbidden to make any explanations whatever of the text read, lest in their interpretation they fall into some confessional understanding of the text and thereby offend the conscience of children of other denominations. In the selection of sacred hymns for singing, strict tact must be observed, and for common singing only such hymns should be chosen as contain no denominational flavor but rather express common Christian truths. This rule extends to books as well, so that in school libraries may be accepted only such books as are completely free from any religious sympathies or antipathies[7].

Unstable as this system is in itself, it represents the only way out of the difficulty in which the state was placed in introducing its theory into the school—the separation of church from state. And it has proved satisfactory to a considerable degree. All Protestant denominations, which constitute the majority of the American population, have agreed on its general principle, since all recognize to a greater or lesser extent the religious elements introduced into the school. True, they consider these elements far insufficient for the completeness of religious education, but they regard the latter more as the responsibility of churches than of schools, and it is indeed supplemented by churches through Sunday schools, which have a specifically religious character. Objections have been raised against such an arrangement of religious instruction in schools, other objections having a confessional character, for example, in view of the possibility that teachers belonging to one denomination or another might easily fall into one-sidedness in the selection of even texts of Holy Scripture for reading in school and thereby might violate the nonsectarian character of the school, favoring their own sect or denomination; but these objections do not carry sufficient force and power, and the school faces no danger from them. Protestant denominations in general, and small sects in particular, in the absence of firmly established traditional beliefs and amid constant ferment and mutability, in essence attach very little importance to particular denominational differences, and therefore are concerned only that instruction not be entirely non-religious, heathen, or Roman Catholic. “So long,” says a Protestant author, “as the inhabitants of a city or state were exclusively Protestant, there could be not or was little objection to the use in school of the authorized translation of the Bible (the English translation, the so-called King James version), the singing of hymns, the reading of the Lord’s Prayer or other similar religious exercises, at the teacher’s discretion. Weak objections, sometimes raised against such a system, never took the form of organized opposition or passed into political agitation. In those communities and school districts where the Protestant element still predominates, rarely, if ever, are objections raised against these simple Christian influences. They are entirely free from ecclesiastical authority, ordinarily alien to narrow confessionalism, and free from proselytizing tendencies. As the school system spread throughout the country, the brief and simple religious exercises in question continued to be performed. But when Catholic emigration began arriving in myriads to our shores and gained weight in political affairs, the public school was attacked as a Protestant agency, in spirit hostile to the Catholic church”[8].

Thus, the public school, built on the shaky compromise between state and religion and various denominations, had to encounter in time such an opponent as one that, appearing with firmly established traditional foundations, conducted a strong agitation against the very principle on which the shakily built school rested. The history of this agitation on the part of Roman Catholicism against the American school represents an interesting page in the history of the Roman Catholic church in America and its relations with the American republic.