TEACHERS AND LOYALTY

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 41, 16 August 1941, Page 8

TEACHERS AND LOYALTY

(To the Editor.) Sir,—Members of education boards and school committees who want to dismiss teachers who are conscientious objectors have neither law nor reason to support them. The law of the country secures the right of citizens to be conscientious objectors, and genuine democrats will consequently do one of two things—get the law altered or abide by it loyally. For board members and committeemen t& judge a teacher guilty of gross misdemeanour because in the exercise of his legal rights he is reported, nearly always distortedly, to have said something

they dislike is illegal, undemocratic, and unjust; so is his subjection to an inquisition about his personal political and religious views when there is no question of his using these to influence the attitudes of the children he teaches. Reasonable people will not find it! easy to understand why a teacher whose right to object is allowed him as a citizen by law should be regarded as unfitted to teach children because he exercises it. In. their religious and political ideas teachers are a very varied group; nearly all attitudes to religion are to be found amongst them, from a fervent evangelicalism, to an equally fervent atheism, and all shades of political opinion from imperialism to Marxism. But nearly all of them keep their opinions to themselves when they are in the classroom; and I do not think that pacifists are likely to be less trustworthy in this respect than other kinds of nonconformists. There is the further point that, though to the public mind pacifists are men of military age, the term really includes men beyond military age and women of all ages. It is absurdly illogical to hold that a man who has exactly the same views as others is unfitted to teach children because he is under 45, but they, because they are over it or belong to the other sex, are not.—l am. etc., FIAT JUSTITIA,