
Already the spirit of our schooling is permeated with the feeling that every
subject, every topic, every fact, every professed truth must be submitted
to a certain publicity and impartiality.  All proffered samples of learning
must go to the same assay-room and be subjected to common tests.  It is the
essence of all dogmatic faiths to hold that any such "show-down" is
sacrilegious and perverse.  The characteristic of religion, from their point
of view, is that it is intellectually secret, not public; peculiarly revealed,
not generally known; authoritatively declared, not communicated and tested
in ordinary ways...It is pertinent to point out that, as long as religion
is conceived as it is now by the great majority of professed religionists,
there is something self-contradictory in speaking of education in religion
in the same sense in which we speak of education in topics where the method
of free inquiry has made its way.  The "religious" would be the last to be
willing that either the history of the content of religion should be taught
in this spirit; while those to whom the scientific standpoint is not merely
a technical device, but is the embodiment of the integrity of mind, must
protest against its being taught in any other spirit.
		-- John Dewey, "Democracy in the Schools", 1908
