RELIGION IN SCHOOLS

Press, Volume LXXX, Issue 24401, 30 October 1944, Page 6

RELIGION IN SCHOOLS

Sir, —Mr Newell’s statements in advocacy of religious instruction in schools seem to me* to be rather unilluminating. The Christian religion is not a system of ethics,/nor is it a moral code. It is vitally and essentially concerned with a man’s personal relationship to Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. To charge any teacher who does not own that allegiance with the responsibility of inculcating spiritual truths is unthinkable. The New Zealand Educational Institute agrees to that: so also does Mr Newell. In what, then, does his "religious” instruction consist? Ethics and moral culture? These are not religion, though no doubt the fruits of it, and it would be deplorable that pupils should be led to think that they are religion or that they form the basic element of it..—Yours, etc., SCHOOLTEACHER. Palmerston North. October 27, 1944. Sir,—-We New Zealanders are slow to learn even the most 'self-evident truths. Surrounded as we are in these days of war by the results of 50 years of a materialistic philosophy, we still refuse to have any other basis for our education system. My plea is not for the Bible in schools but that the fundamentals of Christianity, as the only adequate way of life, should be taughtin our schools. Sufficient teachers in the profession are both able and eager to handle the subject. One in each school would be enough. G. F. Seward’s criticism is therefore irrelevant.— Yours, etc., JEEVES. October 28, 1944.