EDUCATION PROBLEM

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 229, 20 June 1908, Page 5

EDUCATION PROBLEM

• A CONFERENCE. AN AGREEMENT ARRIVED AT. I DR. .CLIFFORD DISSATISFIED. i BY IZLEGIUrn—PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPVBIOIIT. London, Juno 18. A conference of Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Wesleyans, Methodists, Unitarians, and Jews, convened by tho Bishop of Manchester (Right Rev. E. A. Knox), has been sitting to consider the Government's Education Bill.' With a few Nonconformist dissentients, a basis of agreoment on the question has been arrived at. ' Dr. Clifford, the Baptist minister, who has taken a prominent part in the discussions on the subject, condemns the settlement as unjust, and as unlikely to secure peace. -COMPROMISE. The Bishop of Manchester recently contributed an article to the "Nineteenth Century" under tho title of "An Extremist's View of an Educational Compromise." ' The Bishop has no patience with those peoplo who adopt the principle of trying to find out what tho different parties to the conflict desire, and of giving to eaoh part of what ho has demanded. In that event he esserts that "the combatants are treated like silly children quarrelling over thoir toys. Ono is to have the rockinghorse, another the spur, and another the whip, but whether one is right or another wrong is a question not worth considering." _ Later the Bishop makes a number of suggestions as the outline of a settlement. _ Writing subsequently in his "Diocesan Magazine," the Bishop says ho feels sure that his article on the education question in the "Nineteenth Century" will be misunderstood and misinterpreted"lt is not a plea for an educational compromise. But it is a ]alea that if there be any compromise the ruling principle of 'that compromise shall be absolute justice, and an attempt to show what is tho position to which principles of justice would lead us. lam seriously convinced that the greatest danger before us at the present moment is tho attempt to givo to undenominational teaching exclusive preference in tho matter of support from public funds. Tho arrangement is unjust, and I have given reasons for mv belief thafc such teaching makes for tho very false idea that Christianity is a set of facts and doctrines rather than a life lived in communion with a living Church. Since I wrote the article the Government returns have been published as to the ,£IOO,OOO voted last year 'to relieve the grievanco of Nonconformists in single-school areas. Not half tho money so voted has been allocated, and from the' whole of England only forty-sevon applications were recoived for any sharo in the grant." / . It is well known that the Government arc very anxious to get the education question off thoir hands, and therefore any proposals to which tho Anglicans, Roman Catholics, and Nonconformists can agree aro almost sure of sympathetic consideration.