they now sought to reimpose it through a state-supported educational establishment. Their plans were objectionable on religious as well as on political grounds. By suppressing everything divisive in religion, they would leave only a bland residue. "A faith, which embraces generalities only, is little better than no faith at all." Children brought up in a mild, nondenominational "Christianity ending in nothingness," in schools where much was "taught in general, but nothing in particular," would be deprived of their birthright. They would be taught "to respect and preserve what is"; they would be cautioned against the "licentiousness of the people, the turbulence and brutality of the mob"; but they would never learn a "love of liberty" under such a system.

Here was the nub of the issue, as Brownson saw it: the impossibility of teaching people "to stand fast in their freedom" unless they were first brought up in a particular religious tradition. "An education which is not religious is a solemn mockery"; but "no Calvinist can teach Christianity, if he be honest, so as to satisfy a conscientious and earnest Unitarian." Before they could respect themselves and others, men and women needed to be taught to respect some body of "important truth." For these reasons, education ought to remain under local and as nearly as possible under parental control. ^* But that was not the end of it; it was only the beginning, according to Brownson. The real work of education did not take place in the schools at all. Anticipating John Dewey, Brownson pointed out that

our children are educated in the streets, by the influence of their associates, in the fields and on the hill sides, by the influ-

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By this time (1839), Brownson had long since repudiated the views of Fanny Wright, which also assigned a central role in social reform to the schools, though for reasons different from Mann's. "It was assumed [by Fanny Wright and her school] that parents were in general incompetent to train up their children in the way they should go." In I857, Brownson traced the source of "our illusion," the "undue estimate we placed on education," to Lockean psychology, which taught that "the child is passive in the hands of the educator." "Most of the generation to which I belong have been brought up to believe that the mind has no inherent character, and is in the beginning a mere tabula rasa, a blank sheet, with simply the capacity of receiving the characters which may be written on it."

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