PARLIAMENT Religion In Schools: Mr C. G. Harker’s Bill

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29002, 17 September 1959, Page 16

PARLIAMENT Religion In Schools: Mr C. G. Harker’s Bill

(New Zealand Pres* Association) WELLINGTON, September 16.

Leave to introduce an Education Amendment Bill, No. 2, which has as its object the legalising of religious instruction in schools inside schools hours, was given by the House of Representatives today to Mr C. G. E. Harker (Opposition, Hawke’s Bay). The bill, a private measure, was read a first time.

It contains an amendment to the Education Act which removes from the appropriate sub-section “that education be entirely of a secular character.”

Mr Harker, in an explanation of the bill, said that the House in the light of experience could decide whether the 1877 declaration that education in State schools was to be entirely secular was the right step to take. The Nelson system of teaching religion in schools as practised today frequently resulted in the law being evaded, and religious instruction had been given in schools in breach of the act. If that practice was to continue, the House had a plain duty to bring the law into line with the wishes and the practice of the country. It was high time that the step taken in 1877 to make State education purely secular, and to discourage church schools by starving them into submission, was recognised as a mistake, continued Mr Harker. Crime figures continued to rise, and “we could not take any more effective action than to see that the children in this country receive religious training,” he said. "It may very well be that a committee of experts will be set up next year and will be very useful indeed in deciding matters of administration, but that committee should have no right to make policy," said Mr Harker. If policy were decided now, the i committee would have a flying j start, and it could later say what ways and means were best to implement policy. Right of Choice

“Till now we have been honouring far more in the breach than in the observance the clause in the United Nations Charter which says that parents have the prior right to choose the kind of education to be given their children, that education to be free in the fundamental stages,” Mr Harker said.

If that clause was to be

honoured, there would have to be the amendment to the Act that was suggested in the bill. Furthermore, the House had to ■decide whether to be consistent, 'and when to show that consistency. i “To do that now is the appro- . priate time,” said Mr Harker. “The appropriate way is to take the first step without which no 'reasonable and adequate followon can be brought into operation by the House.” There was a time when the New Zealand Educational Institute strongly opposed such a provision as suggested in the bill. But the present attitude had changed, and the House was lagging behind the institute. The fact had to be faced that the crime rate had doubled or trebled, Mr Harker said. If an adequate system of religious instruction in schools was introduced “we will have started a march to improve the country morally, and will have helped the country to rank more highly overseas. We will bring New Zealand into line with the practice in the United Kingdom, and we will show New Zealand to be a nation which believes in Christian principles,” said Mr Harker. Mr Nash's Views The Prime Minister (Mr Nash) said that the Minister of Education <Mr Skoglund) had announced on September 11 that a commission on education was to be set up next year and would consider the question of religious teaching in State schools.

The Leader of the Opposition • Mr Holyoake): Why has the Government taken two years to set it up?

A Government voice: We haven’t been here two years. Mr Nash said it was a strange thing that the bill should have been introduced the next week after the announcement by the Minister of Education.

Mr Holyoake: The bill was prepa ed before the announcement was made.

Mr Nash: It is obvious that the bill was introduced by consent. Mr Holyoake: Our members tell us what they propose to introduce. Don’t yours? , Mr Nash said it was strange timing.

The proposed commission, he added, would be one of the most vital that would consider the whole education system. The universities commission would finish its investigations by the end of the year, and the other would inquire, among other subjects, into the particular matter raised by Mr Harker, but in a much wider way than the bill proposed. Bill “Not Positive” His understanding of the bill was that it was not a positive one, and that it was to take away from the Act the reference to secular education.

Mr Harker: It paves the way only. Mr Nash said he understood the bill required the education system not to be confined to secular matters. The bill certainly would not get the objective of teaching the Christian religion as a fundamental for the development of the young. Not any type of education would be necessarily helpful. To say that any party should determine what type of religious educations children should have sounded good, but because a certain number of persons wanted a certain type of education was not necessarily helpful. The proposed commission would hear evidence in public and determine what should be done for the best for the children, said Mr Nash.