HORACE MANN'S OPINION

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 4, 5 July 1928, Page 12

HORACE MANN'S OPINION

(To the Editor.) Sir,—As your journal usually allows both sides of a case to be stated, I would feel grateful if you would allow space 'for tile xollowing statements on Bible in schools made by .Horace lVlann, educationist, cojomal legislator, and a Unitarian; his opinions make a striking contrast to those or Sir KoJjert Stout, aiao an educationist, colonial legislator, and a Unitarian. Horace Mann, one of the most distinguished of American educators, laid the toundations of educational reform. He served as a member of the Massachusetts .Legislature. He accepted the secretaryship of the'newly created State Board of Education, visiting Europe to study educational systems there. He entered Congress, filling a vacancy caused by the death of John Quincey Adams. He laboured to reform the education system, meeting with strong opposition from the Boston schoolmasters. Horace Mann strongly opposed this sectarian teaching in the public schools, which brought him into conflict with the clergy. • The following are extracts from his replies to opponets:— "The Bible is an invaluable book for forming the character of .children, but it was not at all necessary to teach the children in the schools the theological creeds." In this controversy Mr. Mann stood firmly, as he always did for reading the Bible in the public schools, but without note or comment. (This principle has not been adopted by.most American States.) He said: "Moral education is a primal necessity of social existence. The unrestrained pas-, sions of men are not only homicidal but suicidal, and a community without a conscience would soon extinguish itself. "Devoid of religious principles and religious affections, the race may never fall so low but that it may fall still lower; animated and sanctified by them, it can never rise so high but that it -may still ascend higher. And is it not at least presupmtuous to expect that mankind will attain to the knowledge of truth without being instructed in truth? ■ ' "Indeed, the whole frame and constitution of the human soul shows that, if a man is not a religious being, he is among the most deformed and monstrous of all possible existences. His propensities and passions need the fear of God as a re|traint from evil. "The man, indeed, of whatever denomination or tongue he may be, .who believes that the human race, or any1 nation, or any individual in it, can attain to happiness, or avoid misery, without religious principle and religious affections must be ignorant of the capacities of the human soul, and of the highest attributes in the nature of man." As Mann's reforms advanced, he took great pride in the fact that more and more of the children of the Commonwealth are educated together under the same roof. The chief fend of this education should be moral character 'and social efficiency. "No amount of intellectual attainments," in Mann's judgment, "can afford a guaranty for the moral rectitude of the possessor." The above principles of Bible reading in schools have been retained to this day in the above State.—l am, etc., K. H. SMITH, Hon. Sec, Citizens' Bible-in-Schools Propaganda Committee.