I recently learned that a big Andrew Carnegie foundation decided to fund pensions for many Protestant college and university professors, on condition that their schools adopt a "non-sectarian" policy.
While Carnegie may have done that, even the Unitarian (a religion that effectively denies Christ and the Divine authority of the Bible, but, unlike its immoral form today, at that time it at least overall upheld general Biblical morality) “Father of the Common School,” Horace Mann (May 4, 1796 — August 02, 1859), who became Massachusetts Secretary of Education in 1837, not only understood the impossibility of separating education from religious moral beliefs, but held that it was lawful to teach the truths of the general Christian faith, asserting that the “laws of Massachusetts required the teaching of the basic moral doctrines of Christianity.” Mann, who supported prohibition of alcohol and intemperance, slavery and lotteries, (http://www.famousamericans.net/horacemann) dreaded “intellectual eminence when separated from virtue”, that education, if taught without moral responsibilities, would produce more evil than it inherited. (William Jeynes, “American educational history: school, society, and the common good,” p. 149, 150)
To critics who were alarmed at the concept of secular schools, he assured that his system “inculcates all Christian morals; it founds its morals on the basis of religion; it welcomes the religion of the Bible...,” but he did exhort that Bible reading be without comment to discourage sectarian bickering. (Mann, Twelfth Annual Report for 1848 of the Secretary of the Board of Education of Massachusetts. Reprinted in Blau 183-84.
I’ll have to dig through my bookmarks and figure it out. It’s one of those things I got to while looking at one thing, came across another, then one that commented about Nast and his artwork on political topics, etc. I’ll try and find it for you and send you an email. I’m pretty sure it was a site that has artwork for sale rather than a University collection but I do recall them saying they were reprints from a collection that had been donated to a University. I guess the question would be whether the recipient kept some in storage for historical reasons and didn’t display them or displays all of them, right?
Regards