REJOINDER TO REV. E. BLAMIRES

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 41, 16 August 1930, Page 8

REJOINDER TO REV. E. BLAMIRES

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—Perhaps the Rev. E. Blamires will look with a not uncharitable eye on the further confused gropings of an "unenlightened" and "inert mind." Ho urges that even i£ Agnostics do have to pay for religious instruction under the new Bill, "their hardship would be no greater than 'Inert Mind' has no doubt condoned for many years in regard to Protestants and Roman Catholics." If the cases are parallel, will the Rev. Mr. Blamires say on what principle the new BDI grants concessions to Roman Catholics?

The reply to my criticism of the indiscriminate bandying about of such terms as "the Protestant conscience" is far from convincing. In evidence given before the Education Committee of the House in 1914 it was pointed out that the Church attendance of Anglicans was lij per cent, of the uumber of people recorded as Anglicans in the Census, that of Presbyterians 24 per cent., and that of Methodists 41 per cent. The situation to-day, J take it, is substantially the same. Hence if all church attenders without exception were members of the Bible-in-Schools League, it would represent some 20 per cent, of the population; in other words, 65 out of every 85 of those included in the collective ."Protestant conscience" do not attend church. Yet, your correspondent tells us, "most of these parents (the 85 per cent.) have very strong conscientious convictions" in favour of the proposed Bill. Most? Let us say, roughly, 50 per cent, of the total population. Then three out of every five of those possessing "strong conscientious convictions" neglect to go to church themselves and at the samo time we are asked to believe are suffering agonies of conscienco until the Bill is passed and teachers "in State schools are required to give religious instruction! There is, I fancy, more than one possible interpretation of the results which have been secured from plebiscites on the question. I think I am correct in saying that the Rev. K. Wood exposed the highly unsatisfactory nature of the Karori plebiscite. Or am I mistaken? It would be informative, too, I think, if the following data with reference to the Otago plebiscite could be supplied:—(l) The total number of parents with children attending the State schools in Otago; (2) the number to whom the questionnaire was sent; (3) the number who replied. The support of Dr. J. J. Findlay is claimed, presumably for the present proposals In the first place. Dr. Findlay has been nurtured in a tradition very different from our own; and in such matters as this tradition counts for much. Mora than this, his attitude as a whole is not unequivocal. If Dr." Findlay's authority is to be accepted, will the Bible-in-Schools League nccept also his own solution of the problem—the "right of substitution"? ("Foundations of Education," Vol. I.). Furthermore, eminent authorities are far from sharing your correspondent's wholehearted approval of the English system of religious instruction. Sir Percy Nunn, Professor of Education at London University, in a book described by Dr. Findlay as "a master.y exposition of principles, writes: "Few will dispute the assertion that no department of school activity is in a more unsatisfactory state than religious training." And John Dewey—hailed by Dr. Findlay as the most profound educational thinker of his day—comes out fairly and squarely for secular education: "Nothing can be gained by moves which increase confusion and obscurity, which tend to an emotional hypocrisy • and to a phrasemongering and formulae which seem to mean one thing and really import the ■opposite. Bearing the losses and inconveniences of our time as best we may, it is the part of men to labour persistently and patiently for the clarification of the positive creed of life implicit in democracy and science, and to work fo. the transformation of ■'ll practical instrumentalities of education till they are.m harmony with these ideas. Till these ends are further along than they are at present it is better that our schools should do nothing than that they should do wrong things. It is better for them to confine themselves to their obviously urgant tasks than that they should, under the name of spiritual culture, form habits of mind that are at war with the habits of mind congruous with democracy and with science. It is not laziness nor cynicism which calls for the laissez faire policy; it is honesty, courage, sobriety, and faith. ("Characters and Events," Vol. 11.. p. 507) One final query: Cannot the Bible-in-Schools League see the ironical incongruity involved in a belief that "any religion worth the name must leaven the whole of life" and the kind of half-baked, neutralised, devitalised, emasculated instruction" they propose to insert into the educational machine? Since the Rev. Mr. Blamires has honoured me -with a reply, I shall drop My pseudonym, "Inert Mind."—l am, etc.. A. E. CAMPBELL.