Duty of the State to Meet Every Educational Want of Its Citizens (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1891 edition. Excerpt: ... unwise and wrong, but the courts will not interfere with it. The legal principle involved appears to be this: "When the power to make rules and regulations is conferred in general and unlimited terms, its exercise is never illegal unless the law or some great public principle is violated, shocking at first blush the judicial sense." If the district is dissatisfied with the action of a board, the only remedy is, when their term of office expires, to put other men into their place who will carry out the wishes of the district. The reasons which led the people to adopt constitutions prohibiting the Legislature from passing any law oppressing any one in his religious belief are equally valid reasons why the several school boards should not do his. The school boards created by the Legislature can have no greater power than has the Legislature that created them. LAW EXPOUNDED BY COURTS. Let us now consider what further restrictions the constitutions, laws, and decisions of courts impose upon school boards with reference to religion in schools supported by taxation. "It is the settled policy of the State of Massachusetts to require the use of the Bible in the public schools, and since the passage of the Act of 1855 there have been but few objections made." The law says: "The School Committee shall require the daily reading in the public schools of some portion of the Bible without written note or oral comment; but they shall not require a scholar, whose parent or guardian informs the teacher in writing that he has conscientious scruples against it, to read from any particular version, or to take any personal part in the reading; nor shall they direct to be purchased or used in the public schools, school books calculated to favor the tenets of...