LORD’S PRAYER

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 18, 1 November 1940, Page 3

LORD’S PRAYER

AT SCHOOL OPENINGS.

QUESTION PURELY LEGAL.

DIRECTOR DEFINES POSITION.

(Per Press Association). WELLINGTON, October 31

“So much misunderstanding has arisen in the public mind as a result of the recent resolution of the Wellington Education Board regarding the opening of schools with the Lord s Prayer that it would be well for me at this stage to make the legal position clear,” said the Director of Education (Dr. C. E. Beeby) in a statement to-night. t “As the chairman stated at the meeting of the Education Boai’d, the question is not moral or religious but purely legal. I would stress that the Education Department is not, and as the law now stands, cannot be concerned with any other aspect than the legal one. Its only purpose in coming into the matter at all is to see that the law, as it exists, is not broken. The Education Department is charged with administering the education system according to the provisions of the Education Act, and the Act is quite definite on the points here involved. It gives no power for the Department to .make regulations *or a board to make bylaw’s or for either body to issue instructions with direct reference to religious instruction or religious observances in schools. Both bodies are charged with the duty of administering the system of free, compulsory, secular education. Section 49 (7) of the Education Act gives a local school committee power to grant, as it deems fit, the use of school buildings for the purpose of moral or religious instruction outside the hours of secular instruction.”

No Compulsion. “This is an absolute power conferred on a school committee and one with which neither a board nor the Department has any concern,” said Dr. Beeby. “However, no body at all may direct or permit the giving of religious instruction by any teacher during school Jiours, or require a teacher to be present at the giving of such instruction within or without school hours. Nor can any child be compelled to attend during any religious instruction at a school which can, by* law, be given only outside school hours. A school committee may, however, permit school buildings to be utilised outside school hours for the giving of religious instruction, even though it cannot demand that either teachers or pupils at - tend. So a school committee, whilst it may provide the buildings in which children can, if their parents so wish, be given religious instruction before the school day starts, cannot order that the school be opened with the Lord’s Prayer. A school legally opens only when compulsory instruction begins, and such instruction must be secular. Any teacher taking part in religious exercises in a school building before the school day opens does so, not as a teacher, but as a private citizen. The Education Board has no standing whatever in the matter beyond power to fix, within the limits allowed by the Act, the hours of opening' and closing of the school. School Curriculums. “There is one other aspect I might mention,” said the Director.. “Quite apart from religious instruction over which neither a Board nor the Department has any jurisdiction, the Education Act gives boards no power to determine the curriculum of public schools. Such powers lie entirely w'ith the Department. From any angle, therefore, it is obvious that any instruction issued by an Education Board to committees or teachers concerning religious observances in schools can be of no effect. It is, I presume, an opinion that certain religious observances in schools would or would not be desirable, but such an opinion does not alter the legal position at all any more than would a similar expression of opinion by any other group of citizens. No board knowing the position would, I am sure, wish any such expression of opinion on its part to be wrongly interpreted by school committees, teachers, parents or children as instruction having any legal force. Whatever either the Education Department or an Education Board may say cannot affect the absolute right of a school committee to determine whether or not school buildings should be used outside school hours for religious instruction, and neither the Department nor a board nor a committee can authorise religious instruction within school hours or force any teacher or child to take part in religious instruction, in school buildings at any time.

“The point has been made by some newspaper correspondents that no objections have been made to opening religious exercises in post-primary schools,” said the Director. “The answer to this is that such exercises are quite legal in post-primary schools which do not come under the section of the Education Act that make similar practises illegal during school hours ;n public primary schools.”