RELIGION IN SCHOOLS.

Evening Star, Issue 21785, 30 July 1934, Page 8

RELIGION IN SCHOOLS.

Mu H. Holland, M.P., seems to have begun in the wrong place in holding meetings to Win converts for his Religious Instruction in Public Schools Enabling Bill. He should have begun, months of years ago, with the teachers, on whom the brunt of this distinctly non-laical hew duty is designed to fall. There is strong evidence that among teachers there is still as much opposition to the proposal as there has always been. It would be strange if there were less, because, in one respect, the new Bill, notwithstanding its vaunted moderation, goes further than certain of its predecessors. The programme laid down is no longer limited to purely formal religious “exercises.” It is proposed that, at some later time, after the school has been opened with those, there shall be undenominational “ religious instruction,” in accordance with a syllabus to be prepared by the churches, to be given by teachers if they volunteer for the work, or by approved outsiders if a sufficient number of teachers should fail to do so. Teachers would be exempted from the opening “ observances ” if they made their request, and children from both periods at the request of their patents or of churches. In regard to the “ instruction.” the eld provision of “ without interpretation or comment other than is reasonably necessary for verbal explanation ” disappears. In the Bill of 1928, Which was not the last before the present one, the Word ” instruction ” did not appear. The first sequel to Mf Holland’s appearance with his new measure Was the unanimOus carrying of a resolution by the Wellington branch of the Teachers’ Institute condemning the present Bill as “ even more insidious than its predecessors.” and reaffirming its Opposition to■ any such type of legislation. The New Zealand Institute itself has how entered the field with a manifesto in several chapters setting forth the full case of its objections, conscientious, educational, and practical, to the proposals. It claims to do so in accordance with a mandate from the service which is fifty years old, and has been thrice renewed in recent years. After referring to the reasons why religious education was departed from by a religious generation sixty years ago, it protests that, while denominationajism is still as rife as ever, “ the teacher in the school, whether Agnostic, Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, Baptist, or honest unbeliever, is expected to be utterly and completely undenominational.” A new duty is proposed to be thrust on the teacher. “ It with unquestionable devoiitness he cannot participate in these observances, yet does so, be should be summarily dismissed. Is this intended? No. So long as he gives external lipservice lie is quite acceptable.” That understanding is condemned as a wrong to the teacher and wj-ong to the child. The teacher who objects, it is predicted, will be marked by school committees. He will be under a special disadvantage in many country districts, and the result will be the same whether the objection is positive, in the ease of the observances, or negative- -merely omission to volunteer—in the case of the religious instruction. The injustice is complained of that, for a brief period every day, the lay teacher should be expected to become a clergyman too. An important point is made when it is stated that the Bill takes two hours out of the school week of twefaty-five. “ The school week of twenty-five hours still leaves over seventy hours of the Waking time of the youngest child at the disposal of all genuine advocates of religious teaching. These advocates have their institutions, their organisations, and their thousands of highly-specialised propagators of the various creeds they avow, It used to be the mission of these churches, acting in conjunction with parental adherents of their faith,

not only to keep to themselves the religious instruction of their young, but also to jealously safeguard it against the intrusion and encroachment of outside influences and agencies. These churches still have on an average seventy hours of the child’s waking day from which to select times appropriate to the giving under their own auspices of religious teaching. Why do not parents and churches combine to make use of at least two hours out of these seventy? Why have they never to anything like an effective extent availed themselves of the facilities offered them by the Nelson system? Why are they now prepared to turn over to the dubious care of what from a really religious standpoint they cannot but regard as a worldly officialism the religious teaching of the chilcj?” The lay teachers, obviously, are not the peojflo who should be required to do the work.