The Necessity of Religious Training in Modern Education

The Necessity of Religious Training in Modern Education By James J. Davis, U. S. Secretary of Labor Written especially for the Era, on invitation of George Albert Smith, General Superintendent Y. M. M. I. A. IT IS LESS than a century ago that the Christian world reached the conviction that every child is entitled to an education. This may be hard to believe, but it is literal fact. Not that the value of an education was ever belittled by any intelligent person. The idea that prevailed so long was that education was for the children of the rich or aristocratic circles. Or it was for children of unusual gifts. These have always been by far in the minority, which meant that the vast majority of mankind never thought of education as we all know it today. In fact, you do not have to go very far back in history to find a time when few besides monks or Christian clergy¬ men were able to read and write. Charlemagne himself was only learning his letters late in life. Kings themselves scorned such knowledge as beneath them. It is easy to imagine what society was like in such dark ages. Today education is part of the democratic ideal. We Amer¬ icans no more think of depriving a child of his education than we think of depriving a citizen of his right to the ballot. We have only to make sure that we are putting the principle to the best practical use and in the best practical manner. And we have good reason to question how well we are doing this. During the Great War it was revealed to us in the army tests that we are not so well edu¬ cated as we thought we were. Great numbers of drafted men were found unable to read or write. A discouraging number were found to be of feeble mentality and unfit for any education at all. Yet, seeing to it that our children are able to read, write, and possess a fair knowledge of mathematics, geography and the other elementary studies, is not enough. Education should instruct our children in the art of living life. They should be taught facts, but they should be built into well-rounded personalities. We must teach the heart, as well as the head and hand. Even today we are not quite satisfied as to what constitutes a real education. In some schools our children are crammed with facts. But the possession of all the facts in the world does not bring sense

648 IMPROVEMENT ERA and judgment. It is easy for a man to know everything and still possess no understanding of anything. You may teach a boy half a dozen languages, and yet not teach him to talk sense in any one of them. Not long ago I met a man who had fluent command of four or five languages, yet he had no occupation, and despaired of ever finding one. In a sense, he was an educated person, yet he was at a total loss as to how to take hold of life and put himself to use. Always and everlastingly our system of education must be aimed to awaken the inner being in every boy or girl, so that they learn only to be aroused to the creation of ideas of their own. In a word, the thing is not to fill them full of information, but to make them think for themselves. “All education should be moral first; intellectual secondarily” — so said John Ruskin. What he meant was that education needs to be based on the moral or religious sense. It is not enough to be educated and to have original ideas; those ideas and that teaching must be used for a good and moral purpose. And by moral purpose we mean no narrow fanaticism but a breadth that includes all hu¬ manity. A man may profess the most devout belief in a Deity, and yet live in a way to falsify his profession. On the other hand, a man may venture no opinions and beliefs as to where he stands in relation to God, and still live a perfectly upright life. In one sense, the man who professes one way and lives another way is immoral; whereas, the man who professes no beliefs but lives in an upright manner is moral. I have known many men who pretended to treat religion lightly, who yet were deeply religious. The point I am aiming at is that no man can live a truly moral life without proving the existence in himself of a religious nature, no matter what he does or does not profess. So it is that we cannot teach our children right behavior without waking in them the religious sense. By that I mean that teaching the upright life is the simplest way of getting religion into education. But with religion in education, our teaching is built on a solid rock. Without religion, as evoked by sound moral training, all education is built on the sand. I am just as strong for the teaching of science, for science can never truly conflict with religion. TTe more we know of the won¬ ders of the universe, the more we must marvel at the God who created it. Does science prove that religion is false? By no means. The science that deserves the name of science can only report on what it discovers in Nature. It can thus only make Nature more wonder¬ ful and awe-inspiring. Men ask about the mystery of life, but science can never answer this question. The scientist may split matter into molecules, atoms and electrons, but he gets no nearer

THE NECESSITY OF RELIGIOUS TRAINING 649 than he was before to the mystery of life. He only gets nearer to the Great Cause that has brought into being the material things about us. Ask a scientist, “What is life?’’ and he is as much at a loss as a savage. The divine spark that has animated clay and made it a man remains today the mystery it ever was. We know a little more about the mystery, and the mystery itself is more wonderful and mysterious than ever; that is all. But just because science does arouse this wonder as to what we are and why we are here, it quickens the religious spirit. So, I say, let us teach science, for the wonder, the religious awe, it awakens within us. As a matter of fact, science itself is today becoming less and less materialistic. It has split the molecule into atoms, and the atoms into particles of electricity. Yet, there is not a scientist able to explain the nature of electricity. He has simply seen the solid matter dissolve into particles of force. In a nutshell, we cannot see deeply into the material objects about us without running straight into God. The more we know about matter the more we are whisked off the earth into the realm of spirit. Every day we use electricity to do every conceivable “material” thing for us; but what this elec¬ tricity itself is, we do not know, except that it is another of God’s wonders. Having children of my own, I want them to be men and women convinced that religion is not a special subject for thought on a single day of the week. I want them schooled in the wonders of this world so that they see a religious significance in everything about them. That is the sort of education I believe in, and the sort of religious training I think should be a part of that education. If our world were a toy blown about by blind forces, with no plan, no direction guiding its course, I believe we should all go mad. What would be the use of life if, after our little span, we were to lie down to an eternal and dreamless sleep? No, all the inspiration we have to live comes from the conviction that we are here for a purpose. And education should teach us to discover that high pur¬ pose, and live up to it. That is the morality, the religion, I want to see introduced in our educational system. No nation whose people lacked all religious faith, all moral purpose, ever throve and prospered. We hear much today of “pagan” peoples. It is all a mistake. The so-called pagan peoples were not irreligious. It is our habit to think of the Greeks and Romans as pagans. But they had their deeply religious beliefs, and never profaned those beliefs or denied their gods. We do not now accept the gods they worshiped so devoutly, and there is a point we should take to heart. The point is that those people were religious. They taught love of their gods and obedience to divine command to

650 IMPROVEMENT ERA rhe children in their schools. Today we should recognize the fact that the religious feeling can exist in many forms. We do not today worship the gods worshiped by the ancients. But we still have many different ways of worshiping Deity, and while each of us should preserve his own mode of worship, he should respect the other man's religious beliefs and habits. Tolerance should be a part of every man’s religion, and tolerance should be a part of every man’s education. Our forefathers are thought to have been sterner people than we are — people more narrow and bigoted. It is true they may have had a narrower view of life, because they lacked our modern knowl¬ edge of life. But I believe sometimes they had a deeper knowledge of the purpose of life. Today too many of our children come forth from school with the wrong teaching. We send them forth be¬ wildered, uncertain as to whether or not it is a superstition that we have such a thing as a soul. We leave them equally uncertain as to how to regard the Bible. They desire to appear “modern,” and think that to be modern and sophisticated they must deny all the simple old teachings. But if civilization is to live and be passed on to our successors, we must be all the more sure we teach our chil¬ dren that all the old so-called platitudes are true. We must teach them that the first of those old truths is that life must be lived nobly in the sight of God and our fellow-beings. It is always true that we need to be kind and good to one another. That, too, is only another expression of the religious spirit in us. What really is morality? My answer is, it is the science of acting nobly and with decency toward one another. You might put that principle of morality into any system of clauses you please, but the form would mean little so long as the central principle remained the same — the principle of kindness to others. The teachings of any form of religion should put its believers into harmony with God. Just so, the methods of education should awaken in our children that moral and religious sense without which any nation must die. Let us fill our boys and girls with a love of beauty and a desire to find it and live it. What is morality but fineness and beauty of conduct? Yet even this is not all. It is not enough to win the approval of your fellow-beings. For peace of his soul, a man must have the approval of his God. Let us have the moral training that will give us the approval of our fellow-beings. Let us have the religious training that will give us God’s blessing.