The name is absent

Religion               79

excite strong feelings in any section of the community. The
task of the public teacher of today has increased in difficulty
because society is no longer homogeneous. The majority
of people live in great cities, and both in these and in the
country the population is drawn from diverse grades of
society and equally diverse religions or none. To promote
unity in such composite groups with such mutually unsym-
pathetic backgrounds is extraordinarily difficult. Con-
troversy and prejudice are so easily aroused by the social,
doctrinal, or ecclesiastical accretions of religion that safety
for the common school depends upon avoiding them. On the
other hand, in very many communities the majority of citi-
zens believe that to deprive their children of all religious in-
fluence in the day-school, is to send them into the world
with a narrow and motiveless education. Possibly this
class is increasing, and if so the common school may meet
a new problem. Some, realizing that the important factor
is not the form of words in which “religious knowledge”
is taught, but the character of the teacher to whom the child
is exposed, will use their influence to see that great care is
taken in choosing the teacher, and then in allowing liberty
to train the spiritual aspiration of the child towards the
highest ideals of conduct. But there are many who hesitate
to entrust their children to the common school because in
it, they fear, the commingled diversities obliterate those cul-
tural and religious standards which they hold to be supreme.
Therefore, if their means permit, they send their children
to private schools in which the atmosphere and educational
purpose are influenced by religious ideals. How far this
separatist movement is social, and how far religious, it is
hard to decide; but if our system of public education is to
fulfill its purpose without impoverishment, a spirit of con-
cession ought to prevail towards those who feel strongly

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