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/ (religion) % 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                          /
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