SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVI. No. 653 



until very recently, hardly escape the al- 

 ternative of silence or banishment. The 

 teaching of history in schools and colleges 

 is watched with great suspicion by different 

 parties in church and state, lest some un- 

 welcome lessons of present application be 

 drawn from the history of the past. Pro- 

 fessors of economics are not even supposed 

 to be free in some American communities 

 which have held for generations with great 

 unanimity the doctrine of protection. The 

 endowed institutions are by no means ex- 

 empt from this strong pressure of public 

 opinion; for they are sensitive to threats 

 that the stream of gifts on which they 

 depend will be cut off. This multitudinous 

 tyrannical opinion is even more formidable 

 to one who offends it than the despotic will 

 of a single tyrant or small group of tyrants. 

 It affects the imagination more, because it 

 seems omnipresent, merciless, and irrespon- 

 sible ; and therefore resistance to it requires 

 a rare kind of moral courage. For this 

 difficulty there is no remedy except the 

 liberalizing of the common people, or at 

 least of the educated class. To be sure, 

 there is another mode of preventing free 

 teaching on dangerous subjects, which is 

 quite as effective as persecution and much 

 quieter, namely, the omission of all teach- 

 ing on those subjects, and the elimination 

 of reading matter bearing on them. Thus 

 the supreme subject of theology has been 

 banished from the state universities, and 

 from many of the endowed universities; 

 and iia some parts of the coimtry the sup- 

 pression of Bible-reading and prayer at the 

 opening exercises of the schools, in defer- 

 ence to Eoman Catholic objections, has re- 

 sulted in the children's getting no direct 

 ethical instruction whatsoever. A comical 

 illustration of this control by omission is 

 the recent suggestion that Shakespeare's 

 "Merchant of Venice" ought not to be read 

 in any school where there are Jewish chil- 



dren, because it contains an unamiable and 

 inaccurate representation of the character 

 of a Jewish money lender. 



A long tenure of office for teachers is 

 wellnigh indispensable, if a just academic 

 freedom is to be secured for them. In the 

 absence of laws providing for it, this long 

 tenure, after suitable periods of probation, 

 is only to be secured in this country through 

 the voluntary, habitual action of school 

 committees and boards of trustees. In this 

 respect, great improvements have been made 

 all over the country through the reforms 

 in the structure or composition of the com- 

 mittees which govern the free schools and 

 of the boards of trustees for institutions of 

 higher education; but much still remains 

 to be done. So long as school committees 

 insist on annual elections of all teachers, 

 and boards of trustees of colleges and uni- 

 versities claim the right to dismiss at pleas- 

 ure all the officers of the institutions in 

 their charge, there will be no security for 

 the teachers' proper freedom. We have, 

 however, learned what the proper tenure 

 for a teacher is. Teachers in every grade 

 of public instruction from the lowest to the 

 highest, when once their capacity and char- 

 acter have been demonstrated, should hold 

 their offices without express limitation of 

 time, and should be subject to removal only 

 for inadequate performance of duty or for 

 misconduct publicly proved. To procure 

 this tenure for teachers, wherever it does 

 not now obtain, should be the special care 

 of all persons who believe that education 

 is the prime interest of the commonwealth,, 

 and that teachers should enjoy perfect lib- 

 erty within the limits of courtesy and of a 

 "decent respect for the opinions of man- 

 kind." 



In the institutions of higher education 



the board of trustees is the body on whose 



discretion, good feeling, and experience the 



- securing of academic freedom now depends. 



I 



