OCR Text |
Show EDUCATION AND CRIME. Fifty years ago we thought. wi!i i V,- thoughtlessness, that a common school r.,; --,. when diffused among the masses, would mnl-n a dimunition of crime and close many of the jrc'- penitentiaries in our country. The ree..-', ,,? these, jails and penitentiaries confirmed u i-i ,v; delusion, for wo learned from reading rh- ,?r.i;. reports of these institutions that by far ihe g-.--,v, ,. proportion of the prisoners were unable to --, ,,r write. We thought that if many of the i-.r.iav of our prisons could read and wrie and hed m a: dinary education they would have cultivar.! ;i ciations and ambitions which might have dr-f. rr'd them from a criminal course. The pulpit, th.- prr and the platform were a unit in insisting th.ir i-. norance was the parent of crime and in supp their contention introduced an alarming and vincing array of statistics. The university p !":'.-sor !":'.-sor emphatically indorsed, as was to be expecrp,. the dogma of the triple alliance, and the ju . from the bench pointed out in weighty semer-i that- most of the crime which came officially iim,-? In3 notice wa3 unquestionably due to lack of f,j ;. cation. The odd Church of England clergyinan in an inland village or plodding parish priest in a rural district who regarded the tendency to crinn j as inherent in human nature and looked upon t',! I mere acquirement of knowledge as likely not ., f eradicate crime, but only to change the method cf its manifestation, were pilloried a3 cranks and oM ; foggies. I Since those days common school and hi 2:1 j school education have become almost universal i- ! the United States and Canada. The man who ca.v j not now read and write elicits the pity of his com- I panion3 aa a man strangely out of harmony wirii the spirit of the age. The schoolmaster i3 abroad; the newspaper reaches every home, and book and 1 magazine are on the table of the mechanic and I the wage earner. Education, fortunately, is in f longer the privilege of the few, but has opened careers ca-reers of usefulness and profit to many, and ha been a solace, a recreation and a delight to thousands. thou-sands. But the prophesy that education would diminish di-minish crime has proved a mockery and a delusion. A member of the Pennsylvania legislature ha3 been studying the statistics of crime in his own stat". Between 1895 and 1905 the population increased 22 per cent; schools, 31 per cent, and the numbt-r of teachers 22 per cent, but pauperism and crime increased in the same period 41 per cent, and crim exclusive of - pauperism, 53 per cent. So that th? little red school house" isn't all that it w.u cracked up to be. The number of insane appear? I to have increased 113 per cent, while there wa? j an increase of 13 per cent in the number of crimi- I nals who left school at an. average age of 14, abli to read, write and cipher. Pennsylvania, it may be said in explanation, a large foreign population which no doubt affVfc the result. The foreign element form3 a very convenient con-venient dumping yard for our rascalities, scrap and crime, but in this case our cart breaks down at our own front door. The state of Maine, for instance, which boasts that it "builds schoolhouses and raises men," has been almost stationary in population. popu-lation. Yet in ten years the number of commitments commit-ments to the county jails of the "men raised" bun ; increased nearly 100 per cent. Other states largely large-ly rural and peopled almost entirely by nativs Americans and with populations 95 per cent of which can read and write, show an increase ef crime out of all proportion to the increase of their i populations in towns and rural districts. Are we then to conclude that the masses ought not to be educated? By no means. Not to diffuse education among all classes would be a calamity. On this one point the church and the state are in accord. But the church wp mpfln thf CntWiic ' church the church contends that the state stand ; still when she invites it to accompany her up to th 1 pine-lands of the educational mount. She contend j that education, divorced from religion and mow!- jity, is in eight case3 out of ten a curse and a mis- fortune, and that wedded to religion and morality, education is a blessing to a community and the sal- vation of the state. This i3 the church's conton- f tion, and she holds the proof3 that her position i f unassailable. Many years ago, when we were an enthusiasfH advocate of secular education, we purchased and read Lord Stanhope'3 ''Notes of Conversations.'' Stanhope wa3 for secularising, that is, eliminating the teaching of religion and morality, from th'? schools then under the control of the Church e England, or as we would say, the Episcopal church and transferring their control to the state. In conversation he had with the great Duke- of Wellington, Wel-lington, the victor of Waterloo, Stanhope tried to enlist the co-operation of Wellington in his schema of secularization. "Take care what you are about," said the Duke, "for unless you base all this (education) (edu-cation) on religion, you are only making so many clever devils." The Duke's prediction of sixty years ago is now a prophecy. But it will be said.' ; The state will not change, and we answer: The church cannot. For the state it is an affair of pot- ,f icy, for the church it is an affair of conscience. , |