BISHOP NEVILLE AND THE STATE SCHOOLS.

Auckland Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 179, 2 August 1887, Page 5

BISHOP NEVILLE AND THE STATE SCHOOLS.

Gross Charges Against the

System

(BY TELEGRAPH—OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

Dunedin, thfs day. Bishop Neville, in the course of a vigorous onslaught on the education schema, said: "It is all very well for the State to stamp out competition and then, when the system could nob be put alongside of anything else in order that comparison might be instituted, to declare it was perfect. It was all very well for the State to do this, but might not this action of the State after all be fraught with the most terrible consequences to the nation at large?, For were we not preventing the fertilisation of those best seeds which should produce the noblest fruits on the subject which was to be educated; and if we were doing this, then he said we might boast ourselves as we liked of the perfection of the system. We might call it beautiful and systematical, and the like. It was not very difficult to make a system, systematical if we only took into account someone or other of the attributes that we had to deal with, and left out everything else. If we took only that portion of a child Which was described by its mental attributes and cultivated them, and them alone, and neglected its spiritual character, we might make this system beautiful and systematical. But if so we injured the child individually, and if we injured many of the children we injured the State, becauseit was certain that if here was anything spiritually connected with a child and with God's own word they were doing an injury in the highest possible degree—nay, to the extent of the commission of a crime. (Loud applause.) After complaining of the defects of system, and inveighing against the want of respect on the part of the boys, he said he wished that was the.worst that he could say, but also he was told on authority he could not deny to be authoritive and complete, that in the minds of the young girls of this country there was a want not only of such "modesty as wo desired, but a knowledge of evil- and an allowance of evil, that exhibited itself in ways the most disgrosting. ■Jfoiwas-oot speaking of his own knowledge but on testimony which he could not but admit. There was evidence of these 6hing« written,/!!-not spoken by the girls and this risinggeneration. Where he heard such things and was bound to believe them, he could not but bo appalled at the condition into which we were drifting.

Mr Jago, Chairman of George-street Committee, makes a firm and vigorous protest against the Bishop's charge, saying: — "Seeing the charge is such a serious one, I should have thought that His Lordship, before giving to it the weight of his authority, would have taken the best means at his command for ascertaining whether or riot it is well founded. I do not profess to have more than an acquaintance with the public schools of this city, but as far as tha.t knowledge goes I venture to say that the bishop's charge will- not be against the great bulk of the girls attending them. There are, we know, black sheep in every flock, and it may be that there are among the 2,000 or so girls attending the city schools some whose behaviour and morality are far from what they should be, but these cases are very few, and if they were enquired into it might, perchance, be found that they are traceable directly to the laxity, if not entire absence of pai-ental control. The girls in our schools today, who in a few years will be the mothers of another generation, are, taken altogether, quite as moral and pure minded as their mothers, and I am convinced that if the worthy bishop makes inquiries himself he would be obliged to admit the correctness of my conclusion, and will withdraw an imputation that is absolutely foundationless.