If any teacher in America can be said to have been overburdened with responsibility and vastly underpaid, it was Louisa Bedford. As an elementary school teacher in an area north of Philadelphia in 1844, she faced quite a dilemma. As is the case today for many educators from primary school to the university level, her crisis (and the crisis of the entire city) was brought on by calcified, self-important bureaucrats 'above her'. When the Philadelphia County School Board Controllers mandated that the Protestant King James Bible be the standard reading book in the classrooms in 1842, their decision was applauded by white, Anglos-Saxon nativists - many of whom possessed an inordinate and irrational fear of Catholics and Catholic doctrines. Long before and after 1844, Catholics were held under suspicion for having more allegiance to the Pope than to the American constitution. As for the large group of Irish Catholics in the city, they were appalled at the decision. Why should Protestants be able to dictate their views in public classrooms? As a result of the school board's policy, Philadelphia was divided more than ever, and Louisa Bedford was at wits end trying to allay the concerns of the Irish-Catholic parents of her students..
The Catholic Bishop, Francis Kenrick, relayed two ideas to end the pedagogical impasse. His first solution was quite logical. While Protestant students read out of good ol' King James, Catholic students could simultaneously read from the Catholic book of scripture known as the Douay. This noble ecumenical proposal, however, was shot down immediately by the preponderant Protestants. If Protestants objected to that idea, he suggested that the Catholic schoolchildren be allowed to leave the class during the readings from the King James Bible for Protestant students. Perhaps the Catholic children could be given an educational activity or task to complete until the King James readings finished. This idea was also rejected. What to do?
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As the days and weeks progressed, the nativists turned into spin-doctors and accused Bishop Kenrick and the Catholics of trying to have the King James Bible taken out of the classroom altogether by having the Douay added to the curriculum. While no Catholic had actually proposed substituting the Douay for the King James, some nativist propagandists were well on the way to successfully instilling a perilous amount of distrust between the two main religious groups.
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Enter Hugh Clark - an Irish-Catholic member of the education bureaucracy and politician. He thought he had the most perfectly logical solution to diffuse the simmering crisis. As introducing the Douay out of fairness was ruled out for Catholic students, why not simply conduct class without any religious readings? His secular idea, presented to Ms. Bedford, made sense, and she began focusing her classes strictly upon non-religious subjects. Problem solved, right?
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Wrong. Angry nativists now accused Ms. Bedford, Hugh Clark and Bishop Kenrick of having conspired to remove the King James Bible from the classroom from the beginning, and they treated the decision to suspend readings from the King James Bible as an act against the Protestant faith and as an attempt by Catholics to impose their 'absolutist church doctrines' upon a free society.
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Of course, these sensationalist charges against the Irish-Catholic population had no basis in reality. Catholics simply wanted to have a balanced curriculum for their children. The hard-line nativists, however, would not listen to reason. Protestants and Catholics had co-existed uneasily for years in the city and had critical differences on religion and social customs (i.e. drinking alcohol). Moreover, Protestants always resented competing for scarce jobs with the influx of Irish-Catholic immigrants - of which large numbers arrived during this period to escape the potato famine in Ireland.
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What happened next could be compared to Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany in November 1938. Bands of rampaging Protestant men set fire to a Catholic church (St. Augustine), invaded the Catholic section of town (the Nanny Goat Market) with the intent to destroy their shops and residences and threatened additional violence in the future. When the Catholics defended themselves and killed a member of the Protestant gang, enraged Protestants swore revenge and continued their attacks. Only martial law, which was imposed after the rioting, restored a semblance of order to a city that had been at peace until Louisa Bedford was asked to grapple with - what turned to be - a deadly curriculum.
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In 2010, religious tensions in Philadelphia are almost non-existent. People from all faiths (and no faith) can be seen walking side by side down Market Street, shopping on Chestnut Street or enjoying a break in beautiful Rittenhouse Square - which was once a refuse dump.
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Rather than religious conflict, Philadelphia is today faced with a functional illiteracy rate between 13-20% and a poverty rate hovering around 25% - a conservative estimate.
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The oppression of poverty is as pernicious as religious oppression. How much longer will the American people tolerate squalor and ignorance in the richest nation in the world? President Obama just put in $50 billion into the economy to spur growth. It won't even make a dent. To fight World War II, the US government spent the equivalent of $30 trillion dollars in today's money. The result of that investment? Thirty years of overall prosperity.
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If America fails to invest in its own future, the future of America and its people will be very dim indeed.
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(Picture: Rendering of the Nativist Riots in Philadelphia, 1844 - click to enlarge)
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To watch the video Streets of Philadelphia (1993) by Bruce Springsteen, you may click onto the following link: http: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z2DtNW79sQ&ob=av2e
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J Roquen