Where do our children receive their religious education? At the Sabbath schools. What does that religious education consist of? Ask the average Sabbath school teacher this question and he will not be able to answer it. Is the average Sabbath school teacher able to teach his pupils a lesson so that it will remain with the child--and yet not distort the form of the narrative? We need in our Sabbath schools well-trained pedagogues and persons who know thoroughly the object of religious instruction.

What do the children learn in our Sabbath schools at the present time? Go and hear them recite their lessons! You will find that they know precisely how long and how wide Noah's Ark was--much more than our archaeologists do, forsooth! They will also tell you how Abraham saluted the angels who honored him with their call, and they will tell you all about the Plagues in Egypt; the Judges, Samson and Jephtah included; the story of David and Absolom; etc. If the teacher is a 2person with common sense, and is earnest in the discharge of his duties, he will "manufacture" a rational explanation of some "critical" statement. This explanation, however, will be "explained away" altogether by the minister in the pulpit, and contradicted and derided by the "philosophizing know-nothings" who can be met everywhere. It is very fortunate that most of our ministers, in their eloquent sermons, use figures of speech and complicated sentences which a child (and many grownups) cannot understand; or else our children would, according to our ministers, have to unlearn constantly that which the teacher imparts to them in the classroom.

The press and the "reasoning" genuises in our social circles are as charitable [to our teachers] as our ministers. They, however, speak in plain, clear terms and seldom use a metaphor. Hence the disrespect which our children show toward their religious teachers and toward the subjects of instruction at the Sabbath school.

Another subject of regret is that our Sabbath-school committee sometimes thinks 3more of its official dignity than of the dignity which the teacher is supposed to maintain before his class. It often happens that these dignitaries interfere with the teacher in the presence of his pupils. The teacher will explain something to the children and a member of the school committee who happens to be present hits upon another explanation and cannot withhold it. The result is that the teacher is openly contradicted before his class. These are some of the disadvantages under which the Sabbath school labors.

Moreover, the average religious-school teacher is inefficient. School committees and congregations engage as teachers whomever they are able to secure--be it a young man or young lady who only knows precisely as much as he can read from the manual. This is well known to the pupils. Therefore, the Sabbath-school system, which should lay the basis for a religious education, is a nominal thing [in the life of the Jewish child].