Dear all,
I appreciate Toni Massaro's reminder about The Great School Wars and the
help that Professor Ravitch's book provides in thinking about the recent
case in Maryland (and many other things). The book is, as Toni says,
illuminating for many reasons. For what it's worth, the Maryland case
reminds me of a different lesson than the one Toni highlights: As I'm sure
Professor Ravitch would agree, the first great school war grew out of
more than the Catholic clergy's desire to get public funds; that desire
was, after all, not unrelated to Catholic frustration with the
often-aggressive pan-Protestant proselytizing that was common in (and, some
would say, was the reason for) the common schools of the 19th
Century. See, e.g., Jorgenson, The State and the Non-Public School; Glenn,
The Myth of the Common School, etc. If the complaints of some 19th
Century Catholics about the sectarianism of infidelity are instructive,
so too is the fact that the Common School's boosters convinced themselves
that, in their efforts to make better, more open-minded democrats and
Americans out of Catholics, their aims and practices were entirely
nonsectarian.
Best,
Rick
At 12:52 PM 5/6/2005, you wrote:
The Great School Wars --New York City, 1805-1973, by Diane Ravitch,
remains relevant.
She writes:
The first great school war grew out of the Catholic clergy's desire to
get public funds.
...
By their [Catholic leaders'] description, the religious liberty of
Catholic schoolchildren could be protected only in a school where the
Catholic religion was taught. A school which attempted to teach all
creeds or no creed at all was repugnant to them. Devout Catholics did
not want their children exposed to other religions, nor did they want
their children educated in a school which put error and truth on an
equal footing.
...
[Dr. Power] ...called [public schools] deist, sectarian, and
anti-CatholicHe strenuously objected to the reading of the King
James version of the Bible, without note or comment, in the classrooms
of the public schools.
Her account is illuminating for many reasons, including that it shows
the difficulty of achieving neutrality for Establishment Clause
purposes where sectarianism is defined by some --as it was by leading
Catholics then --as the sectarianism of infidelity.
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