RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 302, 10 September 1918, Page 6

RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS

4 (To the feditor.) • , Sir, —As one who has tried every possible means of' teaching religion in State schools, I am amazed at the statements recently made that the sohool authorities could have granted an hour each day for this purpose had they so wished. I have taught Bible lessons in over twenty schools, but in none of them was I allowed to teach except before school, after school, or in the dinner hour. I have found very few teachers to encourage or help me. In one large school it was often a fight to escape out of the playground, and the teacher looked on and smiled. The voluntary aspect of it is fatal without the co-operation of the teachers. With this, however, the scheme works fairly well, but I doubt very much if any teacher or committee or board would agree to an hour per day even though they wore overstopping their powers by refusing to allow it. The fact remains, however, that our moral instructors in State schools' kept quiet about these facilities until what they had been warned of came to pass. The truth is, there is very general dissatisfaction with the whole system, and in my opinion because the parents who pay for the schools, the parents \u-ose children are taught in the schools, are prevented by .Department, board, and teachers from any actual control, and until a great deal of decentralisation takes place there cannot be an increase of satisfaction among the parents. Tfto system, like many Stato institutions, is in its government' and organisation too wooden and soul-less. The. parents and others interested in the spiritual side of the question know that tho soul of the child is its most beautiful characteristic, and it is because the present State system is such that tho soul of the child is atrophied unless home or other influences counteract it that there is so much heartburning on this question. It is surely a poor kind of system that needs the reactionary influences of religion and the home. Can ;rou call this education? Two principles are weeded to. convert our State system into a satisfactory educative factor. The principle fcf parental control and the priuciple that the soul of the child needs educating and developing stage by stage with body and' mind. _ Of course, those who take up the attitude that the child In.? no soul, or that there is no such tliinqr as a soul, will not he able to follow me— nor does it matter—T am. etc.. W. F. STENT. St. Margaret's Vicarage, Taihape, September 6.