certain cases for the protection of the faith." Moreover, he stated, "The Church is not established to teach writing and ciphering, but to teach morals and faith, and she teaches writing and ciphering only when otherwise morals and faith could not be taught." By the turn of the century there was still widespread sympathy and support for this position among the American Catholic leadership. Despite the decrees of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, many bishops hoped for some sort of compromise. Nor was this attitude dictated only by economics, granted that lack of money was almost always a critical factor. Leaders like Ireland, John Lancaster Spalding of Peoria, and Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore emphasized the value of common schools in assimilating immigrant children and opposed any approaches to parochial schooling that tended to preserve European customs and languages at the expense of American ways and the English language. They were also aware of the special affection most Americans felt toward the public school and the resentment non-Catholics would direct toward what they might interpret as an official Catholic attitude of hostility, criticism, and boycott. But compromise on the school question was not to be, and the more conservative and traditionalist wing soon carried the day. problem, and much of the struggle between "progressives" and "conservatives" over the school issue stemmed from sharply contrasting American and European attitudes toward society and its institutions. Such concepts as free enterprise, individual liberty, equal rights, and freedom of expression were the pride of the young New World republic. In the minds of many continental churchmen, however, the spirit behind these concepts could be associated with revolutionaryinspired attacks on the established order, in particular the Catholic Church. Rome was especially uneasy. Some of the public letters of the popes of that period to the American Church seemed to challenge the validity of ideas like the separation of church and state, the religious freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment, and the secular state school. The day of collaboration between Catholic and state schools abruptly ended and would remain that way until comparatively recent times. eanwhile the parochial schools had become a renewed object of hate beginning in the 1880s when forces of nativism again banned together to form the American Protective Association. This group was succeeded by one of the largest and most influential of the nativist movements, the Ku Klux Klan. Founded in Georgia in 1915, the Klan enlisted millions of members in a campaign against Catholics, Jews, Negroes, and the foreignborn. And a special target was the 7. Iohn Abp of A. Yom parochial school. ARCHISISHOP: JOHN HUGHES The parochial school from the beginning of its existence had of course - been no strahers in selected secular subjects. most part ove the concept of "purchase-ofpublic funds had been historically upheld by instance the ts in special areas and for special turn. Whas of recipients, and though in generally migecisions the U.S. Supreme Court church-mainpt the distinction between secular education, stigious values in education themselves Ping bus transportation in 1947, tolerated. As in 1968, and tax exemptions in stand for if rdecisions by the Court in 1971 The Ku Kluwn all forms of direct aid. In June States to hthe Court extended this principle outlawed. Tnot only direct aid but indirect aid State of Ore including proposals to give tax narrowly aand tuition vouchers to families measure to ldren in nonpublic schools. The shocked asture of the Court has of course throughout affected Catholic efforts to The press a separate school system. criticism. Fnal factor explaining the changing ruling by th and role of the Nation's Catholic down the also arises from the impact of Times, in II and is evidenced in a new set of 1925, comrs on the part of many Catholics. by the Suprttitudes extend beyond the role of - Oregon Srochial school in the Catholic welcome foof things to new perceptions of the set aside wa of the parish itself. This is not to one of the r all American Catholics approve of Ku Klux themselves adopted these newer happily ses. There is no disagreement, Oregon sct, that for good or ill, the future of reaffirmaticemporary Catholic school is being parents to ed by them. school for itself is an important element in the compolding picture. The roughly oneand in the of the American Nation which in regularly idegrees describes itself as Catholic parental liedly different from the immigrant With thions of a century ago. Similarly, with the as a result of the reform energies spawn, the by the spirit of Vatican II, steadily mships within the church itself have historic peone far-reaching changes. The percent onstitutional discipline so long a secondary eristic of the Roman Catholic country. no longer predominates, and for Until veng numbers of Catholics is now attendancally a relic of the past. Similarly, disciplinarnce at Sunday mass, frequenting to Catholicaments, and support of the parish law (a lawno longer are considered essential letter issuriding who is or who is not a when parec. available fhat as it may, however, most canons on ics - whether "liberal" or The net result is that money, including the question of some measure of public support, will be a painfully obvious factor in determining what proportion of Catholic children will continue to be enrolled in separate Catholic schools. Interestingly enough, the proportion of Catholic youngsters that have been accommodated in separate schools has varied little in this century until very recent years. About one-half of the elementary school-age group and about one-third of the secondary-school age group have always attended Catholic schools, which means conversely that the majority of American Catholic youngsters have always been in the public schools. But what lies ahead? Research has become an important new ingredient in Catholic planning for the future. Sparked by a Carnegie-Notre Dame national study completed in 1966, some 57 dioceses and dozens of religious teaching orders have undertaken in-depth examinations of their own educational situations. Out of these various research enterprises have come several important findings that begin to sketch out the future of the Catholic schools. Four would appear to be of pivotal significance: 1. The schools which have withstood the winnowing process of the past ten years have generally been the schools that had on their own account initiated needed reforms. They have larger and better qualified staffs. Their teacher-pupil ratio is approaching the has achieved or accepted professional optimum-on the elementary level in Catholic schools today the ratio is one to 28; on the secondary level, one to 19. These advances plus new instructional methods and imaginative reorganization suggest the pattern by which the parochial schools can attract the necessary measure of local community support. 2. The contemporary Catholic school has largely shed its narrow confessional image as it has moved more and more into the mainstream of American education. There is new emphasis on civic concern, especially in taking responsibility for the schooling of minority-group children, including a heavy proportion of youngsters from non-Catholic families. 3. Increasing numbers of Catholic leaders are taking the position that there are other ways of discharging pastoral responsibility outside the parochial school setting. While such leaders do not necessarily challenge the view that the conventional parochial school remains the ideal way of forming Catholic youth, they do insist that the parochial school must first of all be a quality operation which will attract students on its own merits and not have pupils coming because they are ordered to by canon law. 4. Not only has the lay teacher gained equal footing in the staffing of the schools but lay people are rapidly becoming full partners in policy-making. The fastest growing movement in Catholic education is the development of parish and diocesan school boards. As a side effect, the increasingly lay image of the Catholic school may greatly broaden its appeal for whatever constitutionally valid forms of public assistance may be forthcoming in the years ahead. Such findings and the continuing research behind them inspire in many observers the conviction that although Catholic schools may not again enroll the numbers of students of former years, they will continue to be an important element in American education. Their role is very likely to be different from what it was in the past-in response to the changing needs and priorities of the Catholic church and of the student clientele to be served but it need not for that reason become a less significant role. Considerable readjustment will of course be necessary, and costs will remain a problem. The same can be said of the other nonpublic schools, for they too have been subject to the financial and moral stresses that have beset their parochial counterparts. A recent sampling by Notre Dame researchers indicates that of the schools operated by other religious groups, "approximately two-thirds of the sects, accounting for about 85 percent of the non-Catholic school enrollment, are also dependent upon the services of 'lowsalaried' teacher personnel." The story is thus the same - rising salaries followed by rising tuition costs leading to an inevitable decline in enrollment. Similarly pressed, though for other reasons, are the nonpublic schools without religious affiliation. Many have sought to remain solvent by going coeducational, expanding their enrollments, or raising their fees, and some have done all three. Clearly the nonpublic schools, religious and secular alike, face a vexing situation. Though the cost squeeze is most visible in the case of the Catholic schools, since they form such a predominant proportion of the whole, it touches in one degree or another on all. The dilemma is thus national and pervasive, and it poses a basic question - the question of what value the American citizenry will place on the diversity of educational opportunity that the Catholic and other nonpublic schools have traditionally provided. Thus as the Nation prepares to enter its third century, it is once again called upon to deal with fundamental social and constitutional issues that will affect the education of future generations of American schoolchildren. Benefiting the Child children to get a secular education serves no public purpose." The year was 1947, the case that of Everson v Board of Education, in which a taxpayer brought suit against a New Jersey school district challenging the constitutionality of a State law that permitted tax-supported transportation for children attending parochial schools similar to that afforded their public school counterparts. In delivering the Court's opinion, Justice Black specifically noted that "the State contributes no money" to the schools involved - the constitutional provisions of separation of church and State were not at issue. It was rather a question of whether the State could legally "help parents get their children, regardless of their religion, safely and expeditiously to and from accredited schools." In deciding in the affirmative, the Court established a significant guidepost for the drafting almost two decades later of crucial provisions of the most far-reaching Federal education legislation ever enacted. Move forward now to the 1960s and the repercussions of the postwar "baby boom." In the fall of 1964 enrollments in public elementary and secondary schools reached 41.4 million and those in nonpublic schools climbed to more than six million. The combined total represented an increase of no less than 14.2 million students in just ten years, a jump that inevitably brought on many complications. The schools found themselves confronted by enormously increased costs: for additional staff, for administration, and to keep the plant operating - $18.9 billion in 1964-65 as contrasted with $8.9 billion a decade earlier. In addition there was the expense of constructing some 694,000 new classrooms, on top of which projections indicated that 344,000 more would be needed within the next five years to accommodate additional students and to replace build ings that were becoming too decrepit to use. Of the $31.2 billion in capital outlay for public elementary and secondary education during the 1954-64 decade, $20.4 billion was attributable to increased enrollment. The nonpublic schools – and particularly those operated by the Catholic church were if anything in even worse straits. They too were subjected to greatly increased operating and administrative costs, but perhaps the greatest jump came in costs of instruction as more "lay” teachers replaced the unsalaried teachers traditionally supplied by the religious orders. Within the church, questions were raised as to whether parish schools could survive without some form of Government assistance. In the absence of such aid, the leaders of several religious denominations argued, the public schools might find their already severe enrollment crunch lifted to calamitous proportions if they were required to take over the education of some six million youngsters attending churchsupported nonpublic schools. T here was another equally crucial issue breeding ferment in the education world - the growing criticism that the schooling of too many youngsters, especially those from economically depressed backgrounds, was defective in quantity and quality. Some eight million adults were revealed to have completed less than five years in the classroom, and lack of proper training appeared to be the chief reason for the 20 percent unemployment of those between the ages of 18 and 20. A study of the 3.7 million students in the 15 largest school systems in the Nation showed that onethird were lagging so far behind that they needed special help. As officials of the nonpublic schools pointed out, public education had no monopoly on this problem. The greatest concentrations of parochial school attendance also came from the large cities; these students also needed special (and more expensive) help. Such were some of the forces that led the Congress and the Administration to seek ways of strengthening elementary and secondary education and to consider the state of the nonpublic schools as they did so. As early as 1961 Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, chairman of the Senate's Subcommittee on Education, had asked the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to prepare legal briefs discussing the various issues involved, including one on “The Impact of the First Amendment to the Constitution Upon Federal Aid to Education." Both the proponents and the opponents of such aid took comfort in an early statement in the HEW response which noted that "it is easier to determine what the First Amendment forbids than what it allows." The proponents interpreted this language as suggesting the possibility of bold new legislation; whereas the opponents saw it as reaffirming constitutional limitations. A second major statement in the brief said this: "The First Amendment does not require Government to be hostile to religion, nor does it permit governmental discrimination against religious activities. The objective is neutrality, however difficult it may be to be neutral or to determine what neutrality requires in relation to particular factual situations." Neither side was encouraged by these passages, since neither felt neutral about the matter. And then came a statement that harks back to Everson v Board of Education and paved the way to an accommodation of the opposing sides. "Legislation which renders support to church schools," it read, "is unconstitutional in some circumstances. But laws designed to further the education and welfare of youth may not be unconstitutional if they afford only incidental benefits to church schools." Though the issue of aid to nonpublic school children was just one of many concerns in the proposed Federal legislation to reinvigorate elementary and secondary education, none was more thoroughly debated. In time the discussion came to concentrate on the idea advanced in that portion of the brief which spoke of "laws designed to further the education and welfare of youth." Given the pressures of increasing enrollments, mounting school costs, the significant portion of the load carried by the private schools, and the necessity of improving the education of disadvantaged children wherever they might be, this is the concept that ultimately was embodied in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, most notably in Titles I and II but in other titles as well. As with Everson, these provisions did not suggest opening the door of direct aid to church-related schools. Rather the act concentrated on providing – with day-today application of the law placed in the hands of the States and local public school agencies - aid particularly aimed at helping disadvantaged children but also seeking to provide greater educational opportunities to youngsters generally, irrespective of the kind of school system involved. The principle was the "childbenefit theory," by which the target was the child (and by implication the overall welfare of the Nation) rather than the school he or she attended. T hus, under the direction of the public schools, compensatory education was made available to disadvantaged children in nonpublic schools under Title I, and school library resources, textbooks, and other instructional materials by means of a lending provision of Title II, along with additional benefits made elsewhere in the act. Over the years since the Elementary and Secondary Education Act began operations in 1966 hundreds of thousands of nonpublic school youngsters have benefited from federally supported programs and services previously not offered to them. Even so, not all the nonpublic school children eligible for this assistance have received it, sometimes because of conflicting State laws, perhaps sometimes because of misunderstanding or neglect. Moreover, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act has by no means quelled the controversy over the issue of expending public funds for the support of private and, more particularly, church-sponsored schools. It does not in fact address that issue. What it has done, through the "child-benefit theory," is to provide a practical arrange ment by which the public and nonpublic schools can work together in serving the overall national interest. -WILMA A. BAILEY OE's Office of Public Affairs Staff Tending the "Melting Pot" Imost from the 'beginning the A shiploads of people coming to the New included a number of men and women During the years immediately following the Revolution the stream of these kinds of immigrants coming to the United States from Europe exceeded 5,000 annually, but the flow did not begin to pick up real force until about 1850. Then, after a pause imposed by the Civil War, it gathered increasing momentum, cresting in the decades just after the turn of the century. In 1900, of the Nation's total population of 76 million, more than a third were of foreign birth or parentage, and even so the peak was not at hand. That came in 1907, when the number of European-born immigrants arriving in the United States during that year alone reached nearly 1.3 million, and for the overall period between 1900 and 1920, the figure exceeded 14.5 million. Before World War I and subsequent restrictive laws curtailed the flow, the millions of men and women flocking to America from Europe represented what has been described as the greatest mass movement of people the world has ever known. They also represented an enormous challenge, for as their number swelled, so did the problem of assimilating them. The search for a solution centered chiefly around the concept of the "melting pot." Essentially the idea was that these millions of disparate individuals, with their disparate tongues and folkways, would in some fashion - principally, presumably, by sheer exposure to the New World environbecome "Americanized." ment |