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"
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
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)
