A MORE TOLERANT SPIRIT

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 47, 23 August 1930, Page 13

A MORE TOLERANT SPIRIT

(To the Editor.) Sir,-My attention has been drawn to the resolutions of the Protestant Political Association passed at its recent annual meeting and published in your issue ol the 13th inst. The animus shown m some of these resolutions against church and private schools is much to be regretted, and the attempt to deny them any participation in the advantages available to such schools under our national system seems to be both ungenerous and shortsighted. . it. Many parents in New Zealand cannot conscientiously send their children to schools where a secular system is m vogue. The resolution of the *■•£.&. Council calls the national system free, undenominational, and compulsory, but this is a misinterpretation of the Act. The word "secular" is used instead ot "undenominational," and it is enacted that "the teaching shall be entirely secular." While sending their children to church schools for conscience sake, they, nevertheless, pay the taxes for the support of national education; part oi the education expenditure incurred is for inspection of schools, both national and private, and thereby the secular instruction in church and private schools is kept in harmony with the requirements ot the national schools. This seems a wise provision, and the cost of such inspection for- private schools can be viewed as being met by that part of the taxation paid by taxpayers who do not use the national schools. This is a very small cost comparatively, however, and in view of the objection to the secular schools being so frequently the result of conscientious conviction, justice would demand that other educational expenditure that may be applied as readily to church schools as to national schools should be incurred for all alike. Dental clinics are paid for under the heading of educational expenditure. Seeing that all share alike in the taxation for education, surely it would be unjust to deprive thos.e who are at private schools of those privileges which they have paid for and can conscientiously use. This I argument applies equally to Protestant and Roman Catholic schools. If the P.P.A. upholds the inspection by Government officials of the church schools, on what principle can it oppose the use of dental clinics? Do we not need a more open-eyed policy too in regard to other matters? Even from a purely Protestant standpoint the opposition of the P.P.A. to the training of nurses in private hospitals may be short-sighted. Church'- hospitals abound in other lands, and are carried on quite as efficiently as the public institutions. In the United States, for example, there are many hospitals entirely controlled by the Protestant churches. What would these churches think of such opposition to the training of nurses in their great institutions? A broader and more tolerant spirit i 3 needed than is evinced by some of the P.P.A. resolutions. Religion as a whole | is the poorer when privileges are denied to all denominations in the attempt to deny them to one. —I am, etc., ' JOHN STUDHOLME. Middleion Grange, Upper Riccarton, 18th August.