Catholic Problems in Western Canada
G >> George Thomas Daly >> Catholic Problems in Western Canada_I.--A Moral Reason_
It is the right and duty of the parent to educate his child. This
right is founded on nature. The child is the offspring of the parents,
the continuation as it were of their own life. They are therefore the
natural educators of their children. When they commit them to the care
of others for instruction it is their right to have them educated as
they wish. As by the supreme and sacred right of conscience man is
free to give to his life its moral direction, so also does the same
principle apply to the education of a child for whose conscience, as
for whose life, the parent is responsible. The moral right of the
parent, which is one with that of the child in that period of life, is
fundamental. It constitutes the bed-rock on which rest all other
rights in matters of education. To deny that principle, to deflect it
from its proper meaning, to recognize it only partially, is to blast
the very foundation of human nature. No reason of common good, of
citizenship, can overthrow this right; on the contrary, it presupposes
it; for, the State can only interfere to protect and help this right.
It can never suppress it, and only supplement it when the parents are
deficient and fall short of this sacred duty they owe their offspring.
_II.--A Social Reason_
Society is made up of various units, lending to one another support by
the mutual participation in the activities of life. The family--the
first in order of time and dignity--is beyond doubt the principal and
central unit. The other social factors presuppose it and exist for its
protection. Is it not the source from which springs the very life of
the individual and wherein society replenishes its forces? The placing
of the individual as the specific social unit of our modern democracy
is a pernicious error. This fallacy has destroyed Society by upsetting
the essential order of its units and has robbed the individual of his
most elementary rights.
The substitution of the State for the family is most detrimental in any
sphere of life. In matters of education it is nothing short of a
disaster. The "State School Teacher" is an anomaly. It is the
subversion of true social order for it constitutes "an unwarranted
interference of the State in a function preeminently social. Education
is a social function and cannot be converted into a governmental charge
without violence to it." What Treitsche said of the Judiciary Power in
a country may well be applied to education. "We find the first and
fundamental principle of jurisprudence to be that no one should be
withdrawn from the jurisdiction of his natural judge." The natural
school of the child is the family; the common school should be nothing
but an extension of the home. The mission of the school is to
supplement the home and not to supplant it. The child and the parent
therefore are entitled to have the same atmosphere pervade both school
and home. Everything that is relevant to education belongs to the
family. A policy that favours intrusion of an undue influence of the
State in the school and destroys home authority and parental influence
is unnatural and therefore anti-social. The State is not the natural
teacher of the child.
This fusion of the political and social orders--which in reality means
the suppression of the latter to the profit of the former--is the fatal
error of the day and producive [Transcriber's note: productive?] of
great evils. An Educational Department is the open door through which
any Government may force its particular views on the growing
generation. The monopoly of State education is nothing else but the
conscription of the minds, an "intellectual militarism," which
eventually leads to the absorption of the individual and the family and
to greater disasters than war. Under the cover of citizenship it will
legalize a country into servitude. The school ambitions of Prussia
prepared the catastrophe the world has just witnessed. Always and
everywhere the same cause will produce the same effects.
_III.--A Political Reason_
Authority and liberty are the two poles on which revolves Society. The
perfect equilibrium of these two contending forces, one centripetal,
the other centrifugal, make for its safety and welfare. The
encroachment of one upon the other displaces the social axis and throws
a nation out of its natural orbit. Political Society then oscillates
between autocracy and anarchy. The infringement of this supreme law of
moral gravitation has strewn the paths of history with the ruins of
kingdoms and empires. The violation of a natural law bears always with
itself its own punishment. For, society is not the conventional
creation of man; it is governed by laws that man does not make, but,
which his reason and experience discover and to which he must submit.
This perfect equilibrium of authority and liberty is perfectly
expressed in Lincoln's famous definition: "A sane democracy is one of
the people, by the people and for the people." The reason of this law
of the political order is that liberty is previous to authority, for
authority only exists to protect liberty against tyranny and to
safeguard it against its own excesses. He is best governed who is
least governed. LePlay, the celebrated French economist, made this
just and pertinent remark: "The truly free nations are those who,
without compromising this prosperity, extend the benefices of private
life at the expense of public life." (Reforme Sociale II, page 92.)
Therefore the ideal State exists when all civil or social rights--which
stand for the _public enjoyment_ of all natural rights--are fully
protected by political rights. These political liberties moreover
claim not only the negative protection or non-interference of
authority, but also its positive financial help. For political liberty
exists for the protection of civil liberty, and not _vice versa_. The
collective forces of a society are for the benefit of the individual
and not the individual for them. A State is an institution for the
protection of rights inherent to a free people.
The negation of this principle leads to the State paternalism which
stands for the interference of State in matters which by right belong
to the individual and the family. Never has State interference and
State protection been more exaggerated than they are nowadays. The
passing and pressing emergencies of the great war have accentuated
these tendencies. The nations have kept the habit of being governed by
orders-in-council, by arbitrary censorship and dictatorial methods.
"The Executive has usurped the functions that rightly belong to the
legislative assembly, with a virtual dictatorship as the inevitable
result." The consequence of State Paternalism is the death of
individual liberty either through socialism or autocracy. Man becomes
the chattel of a bureaucratic government.
Of all civil liberties there is none more sacred, more fundamental than
that of education. The freedom of education means the right of a
parent to give to his offspring an education in harmony with his
concept of life, with the dictates of his conscience. As education is
nothing but a preparation for life, its theory goes hand in hand with
the theory of life. To this liberty of the parent should correspond in
society a political right. To deprive a free citizen of this right is
to penalize him and oblige him--as is the case in Manitoba--to buy
twice over a right of conscience. This condition wherever it exists is
a flagrant abuse of political authority and consequently a social
disorder.
Some may object to our argumentation and answer that in a modern
democracy the majority rules, and the majority in the West are against
"separate schools." The political right of the majority cannot cancel
a moral right of the minority. It is a case here of repeating the
statement of Burke: "The tyranny of a democracy is the most dangerous
of all tyrannies because it allows no appeal against itself." This
autocracy of numbers is often more dangerous and more brutal than that
of a caste, of a czar, or of a king. Russia is giving us an
illustration of this autocracy of number. Did not Germany use the same
argument to crush Belgium and to try to dominate the World? Our sons
have fought and died in this war against Prussianism and yet some of
our Canadians--not worthy of the name--would willingly vote drastic
measures of governmental repression which would make the Kaiser smile
and the Czar Nicholas turn in his grave. The velvet glove may cover
the mail-fist, but the blow is the same.
Others may claim that the State has a right to "Uniformity in the
education of its citizens." This is the pretension of those who now
are advocating so strongly and so widely the "federalization of our
schools." We will not discuss the value of this plea for uniformity.
It would open a very interesting pedagogical debate and we are inclined
to believe that the "anti-uniformists" would carry away the honors. We
do not pretend that the State has no rights in matters of education.
But its interference should be consistent with the prior and more
fundamental rights of the individual and the family and not become a
usurpation or abrogation of them. Otherwise it would be the wrong way
of doing the right thing.
_IV.--A National Reason_
The Constitution of a country has as its specific object the
maintenance of the perfect equilibrium between authority and liberty.
"It is the charter of a people's liberties, the shield of the
individual against the possible tyranny of government, the effective
check upon the ambition of every government to extend the sphere of its
delegated powers. Unlike the law, its primary purpose is to restrain
the Government, not the citizen. . . ." (P. Blakely, S.J.) America,
Sept. 18, 1920.
The greatest liberty for the individual, combined with the greatest
good of the commonwealth, has always been the ideal aimed at by the
Fathers of a democratic country. To tamper with the Constitution on
vital issues, to conceive it as an experiment, to ignore its
spirit,--that obvious intention of its framers--is always eventually
fatal to the peace and welfare of the nation. No one lays hands with
impunity on that Ark of the Covenant. The essential changes in the
Constitution of a country act as a time-fuse. An explosion necessarily
follows, although it may take years and generations for a faulty
legislation to disclose its real consequences. This is particularly
true in matters of education. Laws of the educational departments may
change to become more efficient in their administration but should
never touch the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution.
In Canada the protection of the minority rights is a principle embodied
in our Constitution, in the Imperial Statute of the British North
America. Act. Even where the letter of the Provincial Law has
established the "public school,"--as is the case in the Maritime
Provinces--the spirit of the law is generally observed, and by a
compromise and tacit agreement the rights of the minority are to a
great extent recognized.
In the West, Manitoba stands out in Canadian History as the battlefield
of educational rights. Although the British North America Act,
1867,--that intangible charter of Canadian liberties--stipulates,
section 93, that in the carving out of new Provinces in the vast
domains of the North West Territories the existing educational rights
guaranteed to the minority should be respected, yet, the Manitoba
Legislative Assembly has broken away from the letter and spirit of the
Constitution and constituted a grievance which demands rectification.
The Federal Parliament partially recognized the principle of Separate
Schools in the formation of the Provinces of Saskatchewan and of
Alberta, by introducing, in section 17 of the Autonomy Bills of 1905,
the section 93 of the B.N.A. Act, and by reasserting the existing
rights granted by the N.W.T. School Ordinances of 1901. We say
"partially," for it is not the right of collecting separate taxes and
teaching Religion during the last half hour of the school-day that
constitutes a really Catholic school.
The "Separate schools" in Saskatchewan and Alberta stand on the solid
granite of our Constitution. The highest tribunals of the land and the
Empire have implicitly recognized the principle of the minority-schools
in many of their decisions. Moreover, let us not forget it! the
separate school system in Canada is "_protestant_" in its origin. It
was to protect the protestant minority of Lower Canada that this
system, Catholic in Ontario, Protestant in Quebec, was adopted on
September 18th, 1841. In the West the minority school-law was also
enacted to protect the protestant minority of the Territories. Our
Non-Catholic opponents should not forget this origin of our separate
schools. What their fathers appreciated then for their children, we
appreciate now for ours. The principle remains unchanged.
Some may be surprised at our contention to make an argument in favour
of separate schools out of the very point on which rests the
scaffolding of those who oppose them. They claim that the minority
school principle is the greatest enemy of Canadian Unity. What we
need, they say, is to standardize our schools, and bring all Canadian
children under one system. No genuine "Canadianization" is possible
without this unity of education. The advocates of these ideas are now
at work promoting through the country the "nationalization of schools."
The Conference of Winnipeg, 1919, was the first tangible result of this
movement. A National Bureau of Education--a non-government
institution, at least for the time being; a survey of school text-books
throughout the Provinces, a study of matters affecting the status of
the teaching profession--such are the duties that this National Council
of Education has assumed at its first gathering.
This movement towards Federal control of schools involves the denial
and the eventual suppression of the minority-principle in our system of
Education. This nationalization of Education, we claim, is erroneous
in its principle, anti-constitutional in its operation, and dangerous
in its consequences. Uniformity in education, as a source of
efficiency, is one of the fallacies of our materialistic age. Schools
to be successful have not to be submitted to the same laws of a
commercial or industrial combine. Ethnical and moral values do not
follow the laws of the mart and the stock exchange. If in our
extensive Dominion even a unity of tariff, readily acceptable to the
East and to the West, is Utopian, how much more so would be the unity
of the school system? Education, to be effective, must take the colour
of the environments to meet the needs of the community. The levelling
process would be most detrimental, for uniformity in education is the
seed of decay.
And it is on the plea of making better Canadians that the promoters of
"national schools" are drifting from the very basic principle of our
educational system, from the law and spirit of our Constitution. Our
form of Government, as we all know, is dual. Matters of education are
relevant to the Province. The more the Province will abdicate its
claims, and submit to the growing influence of the Federal powers, the
greater will be the danger of losing the political equilibrium of
Confederation. Unstable equilibrium, once disturbed, is hardly ever
re-established. The centrifugal forces of the Province protect our
liberties against the possible excesses of the centripetal forces of
the Federal Government. Any movement that tends to break the harmony
of these forces is, we claim, anti-Canadian. The Premier of Quebec
speaking to the Deputy Ministers of Education and Superintendents of
Public Instruction, at an inter-provincial Conference sounded this note
of warning: "The absolute control by each Province of its educational
system is the keystone of our Confederation; and the whole structure of
Canada would crumble away if any attempt were made at suppressing that
which holds its several parts together." (Nov. 4, 1921.) Quebec is
blamed for being the great obstacle to the realization of the dreams of
our nationalizers. Quebec, we maintain, is the most sane Province of
the Dominion, and the greatest help to the maintenance of
Confederation. This is now an admitted fact by every serious and broad
minded Canadian. Its conservatism acts, we would say, as the governor
on the complicated machine of Canadian political life. It regulates
its speed and keeps it within the limits of safety. Moreover, we ask,
how could a system which would deny the principles and rights of over
forty per cent. of the population be rightly and justly named
"national"? No one has the right to assume the monopoly of
"nationalism."
"The self-appointed or State-appointed nationalizer, we would say with
Father Millar, S.J., ignorant of our real history or its true meaning,
is fast becoming a menace to the sanity of our laws and to the supreme
wisdom of a traditional national policy." [2]
And what will be the consequences of this levelling uniformity that
crushes parental right and fuses the powers of Provinces into a Federal
unit? The Prussian ideal is the answer. We all know what that means
and where it leads. Its principles are the solvents of what remains of
Christianity--unconscious to many, it is true--in the political life of
our country. The armies that our boys fought on the fields of Flanders
were formed and trained in the national schools of Germany.
_V.--A British Reason_
The great misfortune of many who clamour against our separate schools
is their total ignorance of our history and of the spirit that the
liberty-loving Fathers of the Confederation have breathed into our
laws. To them "national reasons" may not appeal. This is very often
the case of the average Westerner. The West is in its making and has
no past behind it. This fact alone can explain how easy the Western
mind is open to influences opposed to the spirit of our Canadian
institutions. It has no traditions, and traditions are the hidden
roots that plunge down into the soil of history, into the hearts of
past generations, and give to a people, its real national life.
Therefore, a "British reason," a reason founded on British traditions,
on the British way of doing things in the Colonies, may make a stronger
appeal to our Western mentality.
Freedom and fair play for every citizen within the Empire, the
recognition of racial and religious rights, have been the strength and
success of the British Government in its Colonial policy. (We
underline "colonial policy" for, we cannot say the same of England's
policy with Ireland--) We would quote here what a well known Western
public man wrote some years ago when, under the pen-name of "Daylight"
he discussed the "Separate School problem" in the columns of "The
Regina Leader," January 3rd, 1916.
"In conclusion there are one or two general remarks I should like to
make. It has always appeared to me that there is among our
English-speaking people of Canada a section of the community that holds
extreme views on all matters pertaining to nationality and religion.
This section holds and advocates the idea, that there must be no
compromise in dealing with matters pertaining to race and religion. In
a word, they would set about at once to "Prussianize" our complex
population. They forget, or entirely ignore, the fact that this is not
the British plan. If the British Empire is the glorious Empire it is
to-day is it not because of the fact that long ago the British
statesman and the British citizen have learned the lesson of tolerance?
To-day, Great Britain with its forty-five millions of people rules over
hundreds of millions of people of diverse nationalities and religious
faiths, and throughout the whole scheme of government and constitution
runs the idea of reasonable and just tolerance and compromise. Were
this not so the British Empire would quickly fall to pieces. Why then
should we not have more of this spirit in Canada, and particularly in
Western Canada? Some people are mightily concerned about our
foreign-born population. They imagine that the process of assimilation
can and should be accomplished in a day. Nothing is further from the
truth. The process is necessarily a slow one. It is bound to take two
or three, and in some cases, more generations. In the meantime we
should strive to make these people feel that they are welcome to our
broad open plains and to our citizenship. As to the final outcome no
one need have any doubt."
The principle that has created the British Empire is the only principle
that will keep it on the map of the world. This is history,
philosophy, and common sense.
And when we see England recognizing the Catholic elementary schools and
subsidizing to a certain extent our secondary schools, when Scotland
has just brought the Catholic schools of several cities into its
system, is it not painful, to say the least, to hear our
ultra-loyalists ever up in arms against our separate schools? To them
we feel like saying, "Go back to England and Scotland, from whence you
or your forefathers came and learn from the Home Country the lesson of
tolerance, of sane political government."
_VI.--A Historical Reason_
In the discussion of many problems we are liable, particularly in the
West, to limit our vision to conditions as they present themselves to
the observer. This is more noticeable in the educational field. This
frame of mind may be traced to various causes. But there is one cause
which, we believe, is more responsible than others.
Unconsciously our age is "_evolutionist_." "The intellectual movement
of 'evolution,'" said Glenn Frank, "was not the private plaything of
biologists in sequestered laboratories, but a force that altered men's
conceptions in every field of affairs." ("Century," Sept., 1920.) The
theory of evolution has such a grasp on the modern mind that its
concepts of government, of economics, of education are looked upon as
the last and improved effort of man in his eternal struggle to express
an unknown and always receding ideal. This has accustomed the mind to
look upon the past but as a rudiment, an outline, a preparation of the
future.
Without entering into the discussion of the objective evidence of the
theory of evolution we may say that as far as education is concerned
its premises are false. The human soul remains substantially the same
and the process of its education has not varied very much with
centuries. Those therefore who look upon our modern Educational system
as the apex, the summing up of all past phases, are greatly mistaken.
"The lessons of past history," writes Dr. Walsh, "are extremely
precious not only because they show us where others made mistakes but
also because they show us the successes of the past. The better we
know these, the deeper our admiration for them, the better the outlook
for ourselves and our accomplishment."
The State-school is an institution comparatively of very recent date
and has no right to be heralded as the final expression of an
educational system in a democracy. The history of education shows a
lineage of men who can be more than favorably compared with the sons of
our common schools. The mass of the people have indeed more
instruction but, at times, we doubt if they are better educated.
Results are the best judges of educational values. History and
experience prove that success in education depends more on the sense of
responsibility in the parents and of duty in the children, than on
palatial school-houses and elaborate programme of studies. This sense
of duty and the feeling of responsibility are not a necessary
consequence of state schools. On the contrary they are more liable to
be found in independent institutions. For, as we have seen, when the
State substitutes itself for the family, the first consequence is the
unchallenged yield of parental rights.
Those who would make an excursion into history and compare our modern
educational systems with those of the past will find illuminating
points of comparison and instructive conclusions. We would advise them
to take Dr. Walsh, M.D., Ph.D., Litt.D., as guide. His books:
"Education, how Old the New"--"The Thirteenth Century"--will prove most
interesting reading.
Already a reactionary policy is being enacted in several countries
where for years the State-School was the only one to share in the
public treasury. In Holland, the Parliament of June, 1920, by a vote
of 72 against 3, passed a new school-law which recognizes and
subsidizes all separate primary, high and normal schools. In Italy,
the Minister of Education, Benedetto Croce, in a speech on the
"reorganization of education," stated publicly that the neutral school
was theoretically absurd and practically impossible. In Spain,[3] by a
Bill of May, 1919, the State universities have passed out of the hands
of the Government. France, Portugal, Argentine Republic are fighting
for the same freedom. In Poland's new charter of liberties, granted by
the Treaty of Versailles, the rights of the minority in school matters
are guaranteed. Our Canadian representatives signed this document. We
were granting then to the new Republic a sacred right which we still
refuse to our own at home, in the Province of Manitoba!