The State, in handing over money for a particular purpose — to wit: education — has a right to ask that it should be spent upon the purposes named. If it be a free gift, it has also the right to limit the application thereof. But here there is no question. It is not a free gift; it is a payment made as of right. It is a debt. The State says: “You must spend so much money on education, which you as taxpayers must supply.” We answer: “Then we must receive that money which we have given you back from you for that purpose. We WILL spend it upon education — and you, the State, have a right to see that it is spent upon education and not upon sweetmeats or fireworks. But you cannot, merely because it proceeds from yourself, profess a natural right to make the expenditure of it conform exactly to what you yourself approve. [“The Schools,” Essays of a Catholic . Rockford, Illinois: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1992, p. 189.]
But if I regard it closely, a curious reflection arises. I suppose that, fifteen hundred years ago, the child of any well-to-do Roman citizen was taught just these same things; reading and writing in his own, and, perhaps, the Greek tongue; the elements of mathematics; and the religion, morality, history, and geography current in his time. Furthermore, I do not think I err in affirming that, if such a Christian Roman boy, who had finished his education, could be transplanted into one of our public schools, and pass through its course of instruction, he would not meet with a single unfamiliar line of thought; amidst all the new facts he would have to learn, not one would suggest a different mode of regarding the universe from that current in his own time.
Sex education may be a good idea in the schools, but I don't believe the kids should be given homework.
The principal goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done; men and women who are creative, inventive and discoverers, who can be critical and verify, and not accept, everything they are offered.
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. [Speech, “Where Do We Go From Here?” by Martin Luther King, Jr. made to the Tenth Anniversary Convention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (S.C.L.C) in Atlanta on August 16, 1967. Dr. King projected in it the issues which led to Poor People’s March on Washington. From Foner, Philip S., The Voice of Black America: New York, 1972.] A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will “thingify” them and make them things. And therefore, they will exploit them and poor people generally economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and everything else, and it will have to use its military might to protect them. All of these problems are tied together. What I’m saying today is that we must go from this convention and say, “America, you must be born again! . . .[ Ibid .] What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love. . . . [ Ibid .] Another basic challenge is to discover how to organize our strength in terms of economic and political power. [Ibid.] Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political and economic change. Walter Reuther defined power one day. He said, “Power is the ability of a labor union like the U.A.W. to make the most powerful corporation in the world, General Motors, say ‘Yes’ when it wants to say ‘No.’ That’s power.” [Ibid.] Now a lot of us are preachers, and all of us have our moral convictions and concerns, and so often have problems with power. There is nothing wrong with power if power is used correctly. [Ibid.] [A] host of positive psychological changes inevitably will result from widespread economic security. The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life are in his own hands, when he has the means to seek self-improvement. Personal conflicts among husbands, wives and children will diminish when the unjust measurement of human worth on the scale of dollars is eliminated. [Ibid.] [T]he Movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor people here. And one day we must ask the question, “Why are there forty million poor people in America?” And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s market place. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, “Who owns the oil?” You begin to ask the question, “Who owns the iron ore?” [Ibid.] One night, a juror came to Jesus and he wanted to know what he could do to be saved. Jesus didn’t get bogged down in the kind of isolated approach of what he shouldn’t do. Jesus didn’t say, “Now Nicodemus, you must stop lying.” He didn’t say, “Nicodemus, you must stop cheating if you are doing that.” He didn’t say, “Nicodemus, you must not commit adultery.” He didn’t say, “Nicodemus, now you must stop drinking liquor if you are doing that excessively.” He said something altogether different, because Jesus realized something basic – that if a man will lie, he will steal. And if a man will steal, he will kill. So instead of just getting bogged down in one thing, Jesus looked at him and said, “Nicodemus, you must be born again.” He said, in other words, “Your whole structure must be changed.” A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will “thingify” them — make them things. Therefore they will exploit them, and poor people generally, economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and everything else, and will have to use its military might to protect them. All of these problems are tied together. What I am saying today is that we must go from this convention and say, “America, you must be born again!” [Ibid.] [L]et us go out with a “divine dissatisfaction.” Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds. Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort and the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice. Let us be dissatisfied until those that live on the outskirts of hope are brought into the metropolis of daily security. Let us be dissatisfied until slums are cast into the junk heaps of history, and every family is living in a decent sanitary home. Let us be dissatisfied until the dark yesterdays of segregated schools will be transformed into bright tomorrows of quality, integrated education. Let us be dissatisfied until integration is not seen as a problem but as an opportunity to participate in the beauty of diversity. Let us be dissatisfied until men and women, however black they may be, will be judged on the basis of the content of their character and not on the basis of the color of their skin. Let us be dissatisfied. Let us be dissatisfied until every state capitol houses a governor who will do justly, who will love mercy and who will walk humbly with his God. Let us be dissatisfied until from every city hall, justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. Let us be dissatisfied until that day when the lion and the lamb shall lie down together. and every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid. Let us be dissatisfied. And men will recognize that out of one blood God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth. Let us be dissatisfied until that day when nobody will shout “White Power!” — when nobody will shout “Black Power!” — but everybody will talk about God’s power and human power. [Ibid.]
The first distinct enunciation of the hypothesis that all living matter has sprung from pre-existing living matter came from a contemporary, though a junior, of Harvey, a native of that country, fertile in men great in all departments of human activity, which was to intellectual Europe, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, what Germany is in the nineteenth. It was in Italy, and from Italian teachers, that Harvey received the most important part of his scientific education. And it was a student trained in the same schools, Francesco Redi--a man of the widest knowledge and most versatile abilities, distinguished alike as scholar, poet, physician and, naturalist--who, just two hundred and two years ago,* published his "Esperienze intorno alia Generazione degl'Insetti," and gave to the world the idea, the growth of which it is my purpose to trace. Redi's book went through five editions in twenty years; and the extreme simplicity of his experiments, and the clearness of his arguments, gained for his views and for their consequences, almost universal acceptance.
From this point of view, the University occupies a position altogether independent of that of the coping-stone of schools for general education, combined with technical schools of Theology, Law, and Medicine. It is not primarily an institution for testing the work of schoolmasters, or for ascertaining the fitness of young men to be curates, lawyers, or doctors.
It has long been an article of our folklore that too much knowledge or skill, or especially consummate expertise, is a bad thing. It dehumanizes those who achieve it, and makes difficult their commerce with just plain folks, in whom good old common sense has not been obliterated by mere book learning or fancy notions. This popular delusion flourishes now more than ever, for we are all infected with it in the schools, where educationists have elevated it from folklore to Article of Belief. It enhances their self-esteem and lightens their labors by providing theoretical justification for deciding that appreciation, or even simple awareness, is more to be prized than knowledge, and relating (to self and others), more than skill, in which minimum competence will be quite enough. -- The Underground Grammarian
Those of us who believe in the right of any human being to belong to whatever church he sees fit, and to worship God in his own way, cannot be accused of prejudice when we do not want to see public education connected with religious control of the schools, which are paid for by taxpayers' money. -- Eleanor Roosevelt
Already the spirit of our schooling is permeated with the feeling that every subject, every topic, every fact, every professed truth must be submitted to a certain publicity and impartiality. All proffered samples of learning must go to the same assay-room and be subjected to common tests. It is the essence of all dogmatic faiths to hold that any such "show-down" is sacrilegious and perverse. The characteristic of religion, from their point of view, is that it is intellectually secret, not public; peculiarly revealed, not generally known; authoritatively declared, not communicated and tested in ordinary ways...It is pertinent to point out that, as long as religion is conceived as it is now by the great majority of professed religionists, there is something self-contradictory in speaking of education in religion in the same sense in which we speak of education in topics where the method of free inquiry has made its way. The "religious" would be the last to be willing that either the history of the content of religion should be taught in this spirit; while those to whom the scientific standpoint is not merely a technical device, but is the embodiment of the integrity of mind, must protest against its being taught in any other spirit. - John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher, from "Democracy in the Schools", 1908
"Come, let's argue then," said Prince Andrew, "You talk of schools," he went on, crooking a finger, "education and so forth; that is, you want to raise him" (pointing to a peasant who passed by them taking off his cap) "from his animal condition and awaken in him spiritual needs, while it seems to me that animal happiness is the only happiness possible, and that is just what you want to deprive him of. I envy him, but you want to make him what I am, without giving him my means. Then you say, 'lighten his toil.' But as I see it, physical labor is as essential to him, as much a condition of his existence, as mental activity is to you or me. You can't help thinking. I go to bed after two in the morning, thoughts come and I can't sleep but toss about till dawn, because I think and can't help thinking, just as he can't help plowing and mowing; if he didn't, he would go to the drink shop or fall ill. Just as I could not stand his terrible physical labor but should die of it in a week, so he could not stand my physical idleness, but would grow fat and die. The third thing--what else was it you talked about?" and Prince Andrew crooked a third finger. "Ah, yes, hospitals, medicine. He has a fit, he is dying, and you come and bleed him and patch him up. He will drag about as a cripple, a burden to everybody, for another ten years. It would be far easier and simpler for him to die. Others are being born and there are plenty of them as it is. It would be different if you grudged losing a laborer--that's how I regard him--but you want to cure him from love of him. And he does not want that. And besides, what a notion that medicine ever cured anyone! Killed them, yes!" said he, frowning angrily and turning away from Pierre.
Let us not weary of repeating, and sympathetic souls must not forget that this is the first of fraternal obligations, and selfish hearts must understand that the first of political necessities consists in thinking first of all of the disinherited and sorrowing throngs, in solacing, airing, enlightening, loving them, in enlarging their horizon to a magnificent extent, in lavishing upon them education in every form, in offering them the example of labor, never the example of idleness, in diminishing the individual burden by enlarging the notion of the universal aim, in setting a limit to poverty without setting a limit to wealth, in creating vast fields of public and popular activity, in having, like Briareus, a hundred hands to extend in all directions to the oppressed and the feeble, in employing the collective power for that grand duty of opening workshops for all arms, schools for all aptitudes, and laboratories for all degrees of intelligence, in augmenting salaries, diminishing trouble, balancing what should be and what is, that is to say, in proportioning enjoyment to effort and a glut to need; in a word, in evolving from the social apparatus more light and more comfort for the benefit of those who suffer and those who are ignorant.
_The General Line of Educational Activity:_ Every genuinely democratic power must, in the domain of education, in a country where illiteracy and ignorance reign supreme, make its first aim the struggle against this darkness. It must acquire in the shortest time _universal literacy,_ by organising a network of schools answering to the demands of modern pedagogics; it must introduce universal, obligatory and free tuition for all, and establish at the same time a series of such teachers’ institutes and seminaries as will in the shortest time furnish a powerful army of people’s teachers so necessary for the universal instruction of the population of our boundless Russia.
“Comrades, strengthen your position in matters of public education, insist on the control of the proletarian organisations over the schools.”
When I had attained the age of seventeen my parents resolved that I should become a student at the university of Ingolstadt. I had hitherto attended the schools of Geneva, but my father thought it necessary for the completion of my education that I should be made acquainted with other customs than those of my native country. My departure was therefore fixed at an early date, but before the day resolved upon could arrive, the first misfortune of my life occurred--an omen, as it were, of my future misery. Elizabeth had caught the scarlet fever; her illness was severe, and she was in the greatest danger. During her illness many arguments had been urged to persuade my mother to refrain from attending upon her. She had at first yielded to our entreaties, but when she heard that the life of her favourite was menaced, she could no longer control her anxiety. She attended her sickbed; her watchful attentions triumphed over the malignity of the distemper--Elizabeth was saved, but the consequences of this imprudence were fatal to her preserver. On the third day my mother sickened; her fever was accompanied by the most alarming symptoms, and the looks of her medical attendants prognosticated the worst event. On her deathbed the fortitude and benignity of this best of women did not desert her. She joined the hands of Elizabeth and myself. "My children," she said, "my firmest hopes of future happiness were placed on the prospect of your union. This expectation will now be the consolation of your father. Elizabeth, my love, you must supply my place to my younger children. Alas! I regret that I am taken from you; and, happy and beloved as I have been, is it not hard to quit you all? But these are not thoughts befitting me; I will endeavour to resign myself cheerfully to death and will indulge a hope of meeting you in another world."
_Administration and Revenue._--The governor-general has control over the whole of French Congo, but does not directly administer any part of it, the separate colonies being under lieutenant-governors. The Gabun colony includes the Gabun estuary and the whole of the coast-line of French Congo, together with the basin of the Ogowé river. The inland frontier is so drawn as to include all the hinterland not within the Congo free-trade zone (the Chad district excepted). The Middle Congo has for its western frontier the Gabun colony and Cameroon, and extends inland to the easterly bend of the Ubangi river; the two circumscriptions extend east and north of the Middle Congo. There is a general budget for the whole of French Congo; each colony has also a separate budget and administrative autonomy. As in other French colonies the legislative power is in the French chambers only, but in the absence of specific legislation presidential decrees have the force of law. A judicial service independent of the executive exists, but the district administrators also exercise judicial functions. Education is in the hands of the missionaries, upwards of 50 schools being established by 1909. The military force maintained consists of natives officered by Europeans. Entry: FRENCH
BURNS, JOHN (1858- ), English politician, was born at Vauxhall, London, in October 1858, the second son of Alexander Burns, an engineer, of Ayrshire extraction. He attended a national school in Battersea until he was ten years old, when he was sent to work in Price's candle factory. He worked for a short time as a page-boy, then in some engine works, and at fourteen was apprenticed for seven years to a Millbank engineer. He continued his education at the night-schools, and read extensively, especially the works of Robert Owen, J.S. Mill, Paine and Cobbett. He ascribed his conversion to the principles of socialism to his sense of the insufficiency of the arguments advanced against it by J.S. Mill, but he had learnt socialistic doctrine from a French fellow-workman, Victor Delahaye, who had witnessed the Commune. After working at his trade in various parts of England, and on board ship, he went for a year to the West African coast at the mouth of the Niger as a foreman engineer. His earnings from this undertaking were expended on a six months' tour in France, Germany and Austria for the study of political and economic conditions. He had early begun the practice of outdoor speaking, and his exceptional physical strength and strong voice were invaluable qualifications for a popular agitator. In 1878 he was arrested and locked up for the night for addressing an open-air demonstration on Clapham Common. Two years later he married Charlotte Gale, the daughter of a Battersea shipwright. He was again arrested in 1886 for his share in the West End riots when the windows of the Carlton and other London clubs were broken, but cleared himself at the Old Bailey of the charge of inciting the mob to violence. In November of the next year, however, he was again arrested for resisting the police in their attempt to break up the meeting in Trafalgar Square, and was condemned to six weeks' imprisonment. A speech delivered by him at the Industrial Remuneration Conference of 1884 had attracted considerable attention, and in that year he became a member of the Social Democratic Federation, which put him forward [v.04 p.0856] unsuccessfully in the next year as parliamentary candidate for West Nottingham. His connexion with the Social Democratic Federation was short-lived; but he was an active member of the executive of the Amalgamated Engineers' trade union, and was connected with the trades union congresses until 1895, when, through his influence, a resolution excluding all except wage labourers was passed. He was still working at his trade in Hoe's printing machine works when he became a Progressive member of the first London County Council, being supported by an allowance of £2 a week subscribed by his constituents, the Battersea working men. He introduced in 1892 a motion that all contracts for the County Council should be paid at trade union rates and carried out under trade union conditions, and devoted his efforts in general to a war against monopolies, except those of the state or the municipality. In the same year (1889) in which he became a member of the County Council, he acted with Mr Ben Tillett as the chief leader and organizer of the London dock strike. He entered the House of Commons as member for Battersea in 1892, and was re-elected in 1895, 1900 and 1906. In parliament he became well known as an independent Radical, and he was included in the Liberal cabinet by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman in December 1905 as president of the Local Government Board. During the next two years, though much out of favour with his former socialist allies, he earned golden opinions for his administrative policy, and for his refusal to adopt the visionary proposals put forward by the more extreme members of the Labour party for dealing with the "unemployed" question; and in 1908 he retained his office in Mr Asquith's cabinet. Entry: BURNS
When the liberal party came into power again in 1906, Mr Birrell as president of the Board of Education in Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's administration introduced a bill to amend the Education Acts 1902-1903, with the object of securing full public control of all rate-aided schools and the appointment of teachers without reference to religious belief. The bill was of a highly complex character; its principal features were,--compulsory transfer of existing voluntary schools to the local authority, facilities for the giving of denominational instruction in transferred schools out of school hours by persons other than the regular teachers, and the recognition in populous districts, upon the demand of parents, of special publicly maintained schools in which denominational teaching could be included in the curriculum; the latter schools might (according to the bill as finally amended) in the last resort, i.e. if the local authority refused to maintain them, be recognized as state-aided schools. The bill encountered strong opposition from Anglicans and Catholics (though the Catholic Irish members finally voted for it as amended); it passed the House of Commons by a large majority, but after unavailing attempts at compromise upon the amendments introduced in the House of Lords, the two Houses failed to agree and the measure was lost. Entry: A