Seventh Annual Report of the Board of Education by Horace Mann
Horace Mann
1844
Education reformer Horace Mann argued that the Bible by itself—when presented without commentary—was pure and universal, making “the perfect example of Jesus Christ” lovely in their eyes. But he opposed Catholic proposals to allow both Protestant and Catholic translations of the Bible to be taught. Here he explains why:
And by allowing and enforcing two different religions, the government proclaims its own absurdity, for both cannot be right. Two opposites may both be wrong, but, while truth remains one and the same, it must be obvious to the simplest understanding that both cannot be right. What faith or trust can children put in what is taught to them as positively and certainly true, when they know that views, diametrically opposite, are taught with equal positiveness and dogmatism, and by the same authority, to their play-fellows;— when they know that if one part of the instruction is loyal to the majesty of truth, the other is treasonable to the same majesty.
Would not this be the case, if a parent were to teach one faith to a part of his children, and an opposite faith to the rest; and must not the same consequences follow where a government, claiming to be paternal, does the same thing 2 In the same schoolhouse, under the same roof, I have passed from one room to another, separated only by a partition wall, where different religions, different and irreconcilable ideas of God and of his government and providence, of our own nature and duties, and of the means of salvation, were taught to the children, by authority of law —and where a whole system of rites, books, teachers, officers, had been provided by the government to enforce upon the children, as equally worthy of their acceptance,—these hostile views.
Everlasting, immutable Truth, not merely the image but the essence of God, not merely unchanging but in its nature unchangeable and immortal,—was made to be one thing, on one side of a door, and an other thing on the other side ;-was made, after crossing a threshold, to affirm what it had denied and to deny what it had affirmed. The first practical notion which any child can obtain from such an exhibition,-and the brightest minds will obtain it earliest,-is, of the falsity of truth itself, or that there is no such thing as truth ; and that morals and religion are only convenient instruments in the hands of rulers, for con trolling the populace. Such a conclusion must be an extinction of the central idea of all moral and religious obligation.
Source(s):
Horace Mann, Seventh Annual Report of the Board of Education (Boston, 1844), pp. 180–81, cited in Moore, “Bible Reading and Nonsectarian Schooling,” p. 1589.