EDUCATION OF TWO KINDS

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21484, 28 May 1935, Page 5

EDUCATION OF TWO KINDS

SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS TRAINING . VIEWPOINT OF CATHOLIC CHURCH "Just as there was a divergence between the teachings of Christ's Apostles and the philosophy of the world, so there is between the two kinds of schools in New Zealand," said the Rev. Father D. H. Hurley, S.M., in his commemoration address at St. Bede's College yesterday. "Underlying the State schools and the Christian Catholic schools are very divergent philosophies. The two systems are not merely parallel tracks by which one may reach the same destination. Those outside cannot sec why tuey should recognise our views: they see no reason why we should not all use the same railway-line to education. But actually our destinations are poles apart. "The secular schools make their ideals wealth, pleasure, and satisfaction. We stress the banishing of destitution rather than the accumulation of wealth, and say that real satisfaction lies in a proper relation between what a man has and what he wants. The end of Christian education is eternal life—that of secular education temporal life."

Results of Secular Education Stating that secular education maintained that a training of the intellect alone would enable a man to rule his life to his own satisfaction, Father Hurley quoted a statement made 100 years ago by Horace Mann, "the godfather of the present American State school system." "Let the common school be expanded to its capabilities and ninetenths of the crimes in the penal code will become obsolete and the long catalogue of human' ills will be abridged. A man will walk more safely by clay, every pillow will be inviolable, by night, property, life, and character will be held by a stronger tenure, and all rational hopes regarding the future will be brightened." But in 1934 Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University, a sadder and wiser educator, had thus summarised the situation:—"Our slowly building civilisation is broken into a hundred fragments. No principle of morals or organised life is too well established and too clearly based on unbroken experience to escape contemptuous attack, no form of folly and no tempestuous phrase-making is too ridiculous to be extolled and to receive popular acclaim. Culture is laughed at, whilst scholarship and good manners are looked upon as the marks of a hopeless reaction. Even the Ten Commandments, the moral law, and the multiplication table may be threatened by some new-fangled law of economic relativity." This summed up the failure of the secular education system. "Secular education stresses the individual and the part he is capable of playing," said Father Hurley. "We think of the actor himself rather than the part he will play. We think of a personality responsible to Almighty God. Only thus can real character be built. To remove temptations does not make a man.moral, nor to surround him with beautiful things make him wise and cultured.

Basis of Christian Training: "A Scottish educator, Professor Geddes. has said that instead of teaching the three R's we should concentrate on the three H's—the heart, hand, and head. .This is what the Church has been doing for centuries. It has begun with the heart and taught the first principle of loving God and one's neighbour. It is only thus that we can teach the child to do his work well wherever he is. through the realisation of his responsibility to God. "The State allows us to build our schools: and we are thank ul for this —it is not allowed in every country. But we ask for more. Assistance is not tho word; it is recognition we want. We do all the State demands and we deserve recognition. We are building two railways, one of which —the secular system—we cannot use if we follow our duty to God and our children as our conscience directs. The State would do well for its own sake to encourage the right of Christian education which alone can save the world and sanctify it. We do more than polish intellect and manners. Wc aim to produce pure, just, and charitable men. well equipped as citizens of this world and with a good chance of citizenship in the next." In expressing appreciation of the address, his Lordship Bishop Brodie said that in 1904 France had banished her religious teachers, but to-day the same statesman that recommended the measure were inviting them back again. They had found that nationality and patriotism had suffered; but it would take a long time to compensate for what had been lost.,