BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 203, 28 August 1934, Page 8

BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

OPPOSITION TO NEW BILL

PETITION TO PARLIAMENT.

A petition has been circulated in opposition to the Rolisiious Instruction in Public Schools Enabling Bill, and it will be presented to Parliament this week. ...

The petition is sponsored by the State Education Defence League, of which Mr. J. B. Donald ie chairman. The league's executive, at a special meeting, passed a resolution urging that the bill be rejected, on the grounds: —

"(1) That it would introduce into our nnscctarian public schools a sectarian, Protestant type of religions observance and instruction, and therefore, injustice, and lend to the abolition of the present "system of national education.

"(2) That its so-called liberty for teachers and parents to contract out is calculated to divide- the educational community into religious and. nonreligious, and, by.exciting religious prejudice, to result in unjust discrimination and social friction.

"(3) That the present secular system, impartial to all sections of the community, has proved its value by half a century of peaceful experience and by the type' of citizen it has produced."

In its petition the league asserts, inter alia, that the bill "proposes to re-establish the old principle of denominationalism which after 30 years of experience was deliberately .rejected in 187", which, in the light of world experience, open's the door to grave dangers in the State, leading, in view of religious differences to subordinate the educational interests of the children to the ecclesiastical interests of the churches, and to subject teacherS to inequality of treatment, offering them systematic inducement to subordinate their inner convictions to the chances of promotion."