THE POPE ON POPULAR EDUCATION.
THE Pope's Brief to the Archbishop of Friburg against the " popular education" of Baden discloses pretty clearly what are well known to be His Holiness's own views on the subject of popular education. In Rome, we believe, he has with great difficulty been persuaded to permit writing to be taught in the popular schools. In the schools of the Cam- pagna he has forbidden it, as absolutely inconsistent with the station and the wants of country people. In these views the Pope has been guided, as fallible men are too often guided, by an exclusive reference not so much to the needs or wishes of the people, as to keeping up the full demand for his own particular monopoly of popular instruction. The astronomer is apt to look upon popular astronomy as an essential condi- tion of popular education ; Archbishop Whately, who was great on the subject of political economy, drew up a series of popular lessons on political economy which he believed would save Ireland; and popularized his own views of the evidences of Christianity, sending them forth in a form in which it nearly broke his heart to have them rejected by the Catho- lics. The Pope has views of the same kind; to him popular education means Papal education,—such education as will acquaint the people with the authority of the Church and dis- incline them to question it. So the Southern States of America regard popular education as an education that acquaints the peo- ple with the divine institution of slavery and keeps them igno- rant enough to acquiesce in its pestilential miseries. And if the people would only take these definitions of "popular" educa- tion from the people's various friends, there are none of them that would object to throw in that flavour of sugar-plums to their definition which by general consent is supposed to lurk in the adjective "popular." The astronomer will teach "popular' astronomy by pretty transparencies and shining pictures of the revolving planets ; the Southern slaveowner accompanies his popular lessons by practical illustrations in the pleasures of authority over the persons of young blacks ; and the Pope himself gilds the Papal instructions with pretty pictures of the saints and modern adaptations of the Papacy for the people. He has had a special Papal railway saloon prepared in France for his new railway, presided over by a matronly Madonna with figures of the Twelve Apostles ranged outside his carriage on either side, six and six, and a double font of holy water from which he may sprinkle the admiring crowds who wait for him at the stations, whether on the " up" or the " down" line. That is " popular" education in the mind of the Pope, with the edifi- cation and not without the flavour of sugar-plums.
But that is not what popular education apparently means just now in Baden, and hence the Pope's grief. He tells the Archbishop of Friburg that it is a disastrous thing for human society when all the social institutions of civil life are not guarded over and moderated by the "salutary action" of the true Church. It is bad, he says, it is terrible for Baden that it should think of even educating the children of the rich who are to have the most,liberal culture, under any other presiding care than that of the true Church. " But if this detestable mode of teaching separated from the Catholic faith and the power of the Church is a source of evil to private individuals and society, when the teaching of letters and science and the education which the upper classes of society obtain in the public schools are alone concerned, who does not see that the same method will produce much more baneful results if it is applied to the popular schools ?" In these schools, the Popo proceeds, "religious doctrine ought to have the first place in everything relating to education or instruction, and predomi- nate in such a manner that all other knowledge imparted to youth should be considered accessory." We cannot help
fearing by the marked emphasis with which the Pope insists on the " much more baneful results " of withdrawing
the popular schools from the Church's influence than even of withdrawing the education of the higher classes from that influence, that he is a little infected with the political
theory of faith,—the notion that the people want a special teaching to keep them in their place, i. e., to restrain them from all revolutionary ambitions, and that if they are well kept down the sceptical culture of the higher classes though baneful will be less " dangerous." Indeed he almost ad- mits this view further on, where he says of truly " popular" Church schools, " the Church, which founded those schools with so much care, and which has always maintained them with so much zeal, considers them as the better part of her ecclesiastical authority and power, and every measure the result of which is to cause a separation between the schools and the Church causes her, as well as the schools themselves, the greatest injury." In other words, " popular" education means not only education fitted to the wants of the people, and so far as may be education fitted to the popular taste for pictorial, easy, and pleasurable lessons, but education fitted to extend the influence and power of the Church. The education will not be popular in the Papal sense if the souls of the people are only its objects; there must be also a direct tendency to make them its subjects,—to subject them to its authority, so as to guard against the dangers of popular risings. That is " popular " educa- tion in the Pope's estimation not only which suits the popular level, but which tends to preserve it, which tends to still " the noise of the waves and the tumult of the people."
And this is in truth the lurking poison in the Pope's idea. We should maintain as earnestly as he, that faith is the root of order and civilization, and that the most liberal education fails of one of the most characteristic effects of education if it simply opens the mind in all directions without find- ing it a centre and a rest. The secret of " civilizing" is to make a true citizen; and for that purpose all is certainly
only secondary which assists social intercourse and accumulates human knowledge,—the primary thing being, after all, the formation of characters the influences of which shall be worth
a wide diffusion by social intercourse, and which can wield their widened powers for high ends. But the Papal idea of education not only professes to provide the centre of spiritual rest to the people,—but having provided it, is still more anxious so to cripple the people's resources that it shall be at the mercy of the Church. She will not trust the people with good schools lest the Church should suffer " as well as the schools." She does not thoroughly believe in herself after all, as she is anxious to keep up her authority by keeping the people ignorant. In the estimation of the Pope popular
education is an education for servants not for children,—an education not without sweetmeats to keep them content where they are ; but also not without a precautionary bottoming of lead to keep them at the bottom and secure the Church her dominion.
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