Nurseries of Treason

 

The occupation forces in New Orleans in 1862 took control of local schools to ensure Northern doctrines were taught to the young. Some 43 years later, the Japanese forcibly annexed Korea and instituted educational reforms that forbid any language other than Japanese, and Japanese teachers were assigned to all schools.  No schools could be established without Japanese permission, former heroes of the Korean people were suppressed, and the economy was exploited for the benefit of Japan.

Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman

North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission

"Unsurpassed Valor, Courage and Devotion to Liberty"

www.ncwbts150.com

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Nurseries of Treason

“With secession, [New Orleans] school curriculum had undergone some changes in both public and private schools. Confederate history had been substituted for United States history, and classes in vocal singing included renditions of “Dixie” and “The Bonnie Blue Flag” in place of the “Star-Spangled Banner” and other musical reminders of the city’s  past political affiliations. 

Though the change to the new order had been quite rapid in 1861, the old order did not regain its former popularity immediately in 1862 [after Northern occupation].  The Federal anthems were slow in reappearing in the classes . . . indeed, when young Clara Solomon attended a teachers’ meeting at the West Elementary School at the end of May, 1862, she reported that the teachers’ voices were “almost drowned by the screeches of the B[onnie] B[lue] F[lag] and other melodies from the various rooms.”

And the now Unionist Delta [newspaper], recapitulating later in the summer, charged that in addition to this form of musical treason, pupils were taught “low songs”; young ladies in the “higher departments” learned to refer to the Federal troops as “Yankee scum”; and teachers and pupils alike wasted school time in “repeating every idle tale that could feed the hopes of rebellion” . . .  “Most shocking of all, however, was the revelation that the directors of the school system had continued to pay the salaries of male teachers absent in the Confederate service.

The school year was not yet out when [the enemy commander ordered] loyal citizens to swear allegiance to the United States . . . [and Clara Solomon] expressed the hope that parents would refuse to send their children to Union teachers [as] few teachers could afford to refuse the oath.

Under [military occupation] the city’s school system was unified, and a single course of instruction was prescribed for all the municipal districts.  English alone was to be the language of instruction, and new textbooks, imported from the North . . . insured politically pure reading matter for the pupils.  The purity of the teaching staff was assured by the provision that all teachers be required to give proof that they had taken the oath of allegiance before their appointment. 

A board of visitors for each [school] district was empowered to screen applicants for teaching positions, thus making it possible to select only those of unimpeachable loyalty.

However, intimations by Yankee visitors that New Orleans school children were not naturally inclined to model deportment were resented by at least one Southern mother.  Answering . . .  [these charges in September 1862 Delta], “Dorcas” snapped:

“Every Southern mother knows herself to be fully qualified to “rear her children in the way they should go” without the gratuitous and generous assistance of these Yankee pedagogues. It is a well-established fact that Southern children are possessed of a purity of though and delicacy of feeling superior to that of any in the world . . . “

(Nurseries of Treason: Schools in Occupied New Orleans, Elisabeth Joan Doyle, Journal of Southern History, Volume XXVI, No. 2, May 1960, pp. 163-166)