Education and Crime

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 35, 4 November 1933, Page 9

Education and Crime

Sir. —To infer that it is. the duty of the State to promote morality is to pervert the meaning of words for. whoever thinks of calling a state or national government a moral government? There is only one moral government, one moral law. one vengeance for immorality, that of God. Human governments, governors, and laws are civil, . not moral. Civil governments punish incivility or crime, the transgression .of their laws, while divine statutes deal‘on the other hand with sin, and. as “E. 0.8. admits that we are to render to Caesar liis dues, and to God, His, then to say we are to render to God, by Caesar, that which is God’s is to pervert the words of Christ, make them meaningless and entangle Him in His talk, the very thing tlie Pharisees sought to do. Matt, xxii, 15-21. The conclusion that the crime situation in New Zealand is due to. the lack of moral instruction in the public schools is no>t borne out by the criminal. records of such countries ns Great Britain, New South Wales, and the U.S.A., where Bible reading is in vogue. As compared with New Zealand their records are unfavourable and it is surely tlie duty of those who desire the secular aspect of our education changed to prove that it is not producing good citizens. The reputations of our citizens compare more than favourably with those of ■ other states. . , j In many communities in New Zealand there are more churches than schools, and yat numbers of them fail to use the facilities available, even now and for years past, to tench religion to the scholars, but would rather call upon the state to compel the teachers to do. through the schools, what church members and parents should do. This “E. 0.8. tacitly admits (or. should I sny. he falls in a pit) when he complains that our secular education compels (which it does not) acceptance and payment for a system disapproved of. for they are at. liberty either to establish, like others, their own private schools or to give the religions, instruction nt home —the responsibility which Dent, vi: 6. 7. 20, a positive and not a prohibitive instruction, indicates

as theirs, and it is inconsistent for them to plead lack of time, ability or inclination in this important duty. In view of these facts, how ridiculous for E. 0.8. to say that “New Zealand withholds the right from those who claim it” . when these same claimants fail to exercise the rights already theirs. They stand seltcondemned and I am afraid that what they desire is the establishment in the educational system of a variety of the Christian religion to the exclusion of oil others which is a palpable denial of the ri-lit of every man of whatever division of faith to stand before the state upon n platform of absolute and perfect equal-ity-lam, etc, ’/ nQB Wellington, November 2.