The Lyttelton Times. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1863.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XX, Issue 1166, 5 December 1863, Page 4

The Lyttelton Times. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1863.

The completion of the Report of the Education Commission has produced the letters which we publish to-day from Mr. Alabaster and Mr. Kaven. From Mr. Alabaster we have an intimation that he means hereafter to follow up his present communication with others on the same subject. The contents of the two letters now before the public, and the expectation of others on the same side, suggests the expediency of limiting our present remarks, pending the more sustained attack we are led to expect on the plans of the Commission. In any case we should not have wished to dispose of the two letters in one article, differing as they do, in tone, and in claims to respect and consideration. Much as we respect Mr. Raven for his evident straightforward sincerity of purpose, we are constrained to say that his present letter does not escape the faults of confused and illogical construction which we have regretted in former communications. There is an assumption underlying his whole reasoning that because the Commissioners have declined to recommend the only educational system which finds favour in Mr. Raven's eyes, therefore the Commissioners must needs be indifferent to Christianity. The transition from this incipient suspicion to a more directformof imputation is short and easy. It would be difficult for any person ignorant of local circumstances to rise from the perusal of Mr. Raven's letter without a suspicion that the Commissioners are banded together as an effective body of conspirators, whose deliberate aim is to dissociate religion from education, and to put into the hands of our rulers an instrument by which human progress will be checked and our civil liberties abridged. Politics and history are ransacked for images of danger and horror. Nothing less than infidelity and despotism await us unless we return to the denominational system. We object to this style of argument in limine. There is not one member of the Commission who is not entitled equally with Mr. Raven to have credit given him for a desire to maintain in strict union the secular elements of instruction and the religious

principles, without which the possession of knowledge is rather destructive than beneficial. Nor, we are persuaded, will our readers, any more than ourselves, be convinced that the Commissioners are persona so weak as to under estimate the difficulties attending the modification of the existing system of education in this province. Those who for years past have gone on without much expectation of a coming change, can hardly be expected to forego without reluctance the advantages they have hitherto enjoyed, especially at first, while in command of the equivalent advantage which the cause of education will gain under new arrangements. There will be enough of difficulty and enough of opposition to call for the exercise of much tact and discretion on the part of the Board of Education. Many will join Mr. Eaven in decrying the plan of the Commission as a paper scheme." In truth it cannot at first appear otherwise. The denominational system of England is not dwelt upon in the report, because, as has often been said before, the denominations in England are, in scale and proportion to the parent State, so different from those in New Zealand, that no analogy can be drawn from a comparison of the two cases. Similar reasons make the European systems of Education irrelevant as affording safe precedents for our guidance. With regard to these countries, however, it is quite fair to remind Mr. Eaven of the fact that within that within the last half century education throughout Europe has been gradually improving, while despotism has been on the wane. This seems by no means in favor of the connection Mr. Eaven would establish between secular education and the maintenance of despotic power. Our best examples are evidently to be sought nearer home in countries whose position is similar to our own. Other colonial communities have tried different modifications of "educational systems, and the Commissioners have spared no pains in laying the results before the public. But, asks Mr. Eaven, what is the moral state of the people who have been growing up or are living under those systems ? In reply, we ask Mr. Eaven how he makes out that the moral defects at which he hints in two or three of our colonial neighbours are distinctly traceable to the prevalence of a secular system of education, were no other deteriorating causes at work of a grave character. Doubtless the scheme of the Commissioners is a paper scheme, because there isno present realization of it, as yet, among ourselves. But, it is absurd to treat it as an untried novelty, and unfair to charge upon it all the social evil which may have arisen from entirely different causes elsewhere. The objections, stated by Mr. Alabaster, j to the abandoment of denominational sytem as recommended by the Commissioners, are such as secure our sympathy, even while we refuse to allow them to influence our judgment. Mr. Alabaster describes very effectively the important field of pastoral influence, which the school offers to the minister of religion. Now we have always held, and we still adhere to the opinion that the object the Commissioners had in view was to afford to all a good general system of education, under such regulation that it might freely adapt itself to the denominational preferences of the population in different localities —in other words that the general system in working itself out, should have a denominational developement. We believe this has been found possible elsewhere, and we can see no reason why it should be impossible here. Though the appointment of the schoolmaster will not necessarily be in the hands of the minister of religion, we believe it will be his own fault if he, with the best members of his flock, do not exercise all legitimate influence in the management of the school. Of course it would be much more satisfactory to human feelings to possess undisputed control as a vested right. This is not to be permitted. But earnest and affectionate zeal, with reasonable discretion, will never fail to find opportunities to exercise the beneficial influence which Mr. Alabaster describes, and which we doubt not he would himself exemplify were he, happily for us all, restored to vigorous health. But the influence thus exercised would cease altogether (and no wonder) were Mr. Alabaster to prove lukewarm and indifferent, and then it would be as little regretted by the public as by the Commissioners that he was stripped of a vested right which he had never cared to use vigorously for the temporal and spiritual welfare of those committed to his charge. The case therefore seems to stand thus: The denominations and their ministers will be able to influence the tone of religious instruction in the schools under the new system if they are individually and socially what they ought to be. If they are not what they ought to be their influence will cease, and we apprehend the community will be no great sufferer in consequence.

"With regard to. the suggestion at the end of Mr. Alabaster's letter, as to the expediency of filling the post of schoolmaster by deacons while preparing for priest's orders, we have not at present space to enter on so large a question. "We presume, however, Mr. Alabaster intends to grant to all denominations the privilege of training the lower grades of their respective ministries in this way. Whether the public would consent to have an important branch of clerical training made an adjunct o£ a general system of education is more than doubtful: and if the consent of the public could be secured, to the best of our knowledge, the result of such experiments in New Zealand and elsewhere has not been satisfactory.