SECLUAR EDUCATION.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume 14, Issue 1137, 22 March 1870, Page 3

SECLUAR EDUCATION.

To tho editor of the "Weekly News." Sic, — Iv our Common Schools Act, no clauses lias given more general dissatisfaction than that which prescribes that none but " purely secular "instruction shall be imparted in any schools under the Board. In tho Act of 1857, it was provided that no assistance should be given by Government but for the purposes of " secular instruction," and that provision satisfied all parties. By inserting the word " purely " before " secular," and by strictly prohibiting all religious instruction, the framers of our present Education Act could only mean that what has hitherto boon regarded as religion must no longer be allowed to form the basis of the morality to be taught in common schools ; but that the doctrines of the Sadducees, or David Hume, or worse, must be substituted. Now, we have no school books but such as recognise Christianity as an established doctrine, and the existence of a God as a self-evident fact. The framers of Education Act, 1869, should therefore have . composed school books as well as a school Act. I heartily concur in Mr. Gillies'a opinion that the teaching of religion as such, or formal religious instruction, is unadvisable in our public schools ; but I think it impracticable to teach morality without teaching God, and I think it would have been found as great a hardship by Confucius, or even Socrates, to be compellod to ignore the existence of a God in their moral teaching, as it has been by the Auckland schoolteachers in general. Though a Protestant

myself, I was trained as a schoolmaster whose scholars were to be Roman Catholics for the most part, and I was religiously taught to respect their tenets. Living under the same roof, and instructed in the Christian religion side by side .with intelligent and devoted Catholics, I never heard anything taught which gave offence, though I could not perceive any appearance of restraint in the religious teaching. In our best school-books the compositions of men of all denominations are to be found without distinction ; and yet no one can tell from internal evidence what Church the authors severally adhere to. Why then should there be such suspicion of heterodox views being propagated by the teachers of common schools, that even indirectly religion may not be alluded to ? Teachers immediately depending on public support for their daily bread cannot afford to proselytise 5 and those teachers who are directly supported by some religious body, and take advantage of their position to propagate its doctrines, ought to be severely punished —as severely, if. you choose, as that first of Italian schoolmasters, who is mentioned in history, and who is held up as a warning to scholastic traitors through all time. With regard to using the Bible as an ordinary school book, I may be allowed to remark I have never seen it so used, though I have heard of it. I consider that reading a small portion of the Bible in a becoming manner has a certain moral efiect, and helps to keep both teacher and scholars in mind that there is a God " who is not far from every one of us." But which translation of the Bible (if any) each child should use is a matter that ought to rest with the parents individually. At the same time, if the Government pay the teacher it has a right to demand that the Bible be not read in schools, and teachers may readily comply with that demand ; for the effect of Bible reading in schools is a matter of opinion. But to comply with the demand that "purely secular" instruction be imparted is impossible without teaching "secularism." Such is my opinion ; and lam glad that our present Superintendent refuses to enforce the purely secular Act of his predecessor. — I am, &c, Alexandee Gbaniv