A GREAT NEED

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 74, 9 March 1933, Page 9

A GREAT NEED

RELIGION IN SCHOOLS LORD IRWIN'S HOPE. GROWING OPPOSITION TO SECULARISM London, Jan. 22. Lord Irwin, president oi the Board oi Education, spoke at Harrowgate lasi night at a conlei'ence of teachers (inaiuiy from secondary schools) and local administrators, which bad been called by the Bishop oi Ripon m colloliuralion with representatives of ether religious bodies in the diocese to consider ’The place ol religion in education.' Lord Irwin said that it we believed in Christianity at all it must needs be, or ought to be, the most important thing in life and must find effective place in any eduoaxonai system that truly deserved the name. It is a great mistake, he said, to think of education as of some mechanical process akin to la. lory production, in which output depends upon a highly organised machine running so many hours a day, for education is that which is the outcome oi teaching given to human beings, and however much you may standardise your teaching, you can never standardise humanity. which is as essentially varied us are the intangible forces from which it takes its root. “SUPRA-RATIONAL” THINGS. It is a mistake not less grave to regard education as concerned only with the reasoning powers of children. Most pt the strongest motives of life have little or nothing to do with reason as it is commonly or consciously apprehended, and if we appeal only to reason we resemble a most wonderful orchestra playing before an audience that is deaf. They will know by their reason. and by study of the programme, that music is being played; but the composition makes no appeal, and it matters nothing what the piece may be. Love, laughter, sorrow, anger, courage, reverence, sympathy—all these, that' are the elemental things of human life, are supra-rational; and it is not the least of Education’s purposes to teach human beings to be masters and not the slaves of them, I am not concerned to discuss the philosophy of denominational or undenominational teaching—and my duty is to administer the law impartially—but I am concerned, within such responsibilities as I possess, for the education ol the country, and as one who believes that religion is vital to the welfare and prosperity of any State or society, to see that the religious teaching In our schools should be as thorough and as efficient as our existing statutory provisions permit. That applies to secondary, not less than to elementary education; and that. I believe, is the overwhelming opinion of the parents, who after all can only share their primary responsibility in this matter

with the teachers and with the State. There is much evidence that goes to show that public opinion has moved, and is moving, steadily away from the secular solution—and while in all too many cases institutional religion seems to make less audible appeal to many people, you have only to look at the columns of the daily Press to learn that in all walks of life people are searching and athirst for something which institutional religion too often fails to give them. STATE MORE SYMPATHETIC TO RELIGION. 1 think we may take it that the State is, so far as one can foresee, likely to be sympathetic to the encouragement of religious teaching throughout our educational system. And this emphatically not because (as Lenin held) religion is the opiate of the people, bet because common people are more and more tending to desire that their children should have opportunities of receiving whatever religion has to give them, and because it is the function of the State to make provision within its own sphere for the desires of the majority of its own citizens.

I would appeal to all those who proclaim adherence to the Christian faith. They may differ in their interpretation of it and in the particular allegiance that they profess. But although, as I believe, the majority of the nation is alive to the necessity of maintaining Christian teaching, let us not be blind to the insidious attacks that are being made upon the whole Christian position. To meet this we must be prepared all to concentrate rather upon the things on which we can be united than upon those which still unhappily divide us. Thus only may we hope to repel the forces which are gathering against these defences of our national life, and invest that life with the vigour and stability that it requires to enable our people to discharge worthily the great obligations in the world that Providence has entrusted to them. The conference was also addressed by the Bishop of Ripon, Dr. W. W. Yauglian, late Headmaster of Rugby, and others.

At to-day’s meeting of the conference a suggestion was discussed that biblical knowledge should be a degree subject, and that there should be at the schools “a recognised head of the subject.” A vigorous protest was made by Dr. Vaughan. “I dread the day,” he said, “when the whole of the scriptural teaching in the schools should be under the tyranny of one individual. We have seen enough harm done in natural science and mathematics in that way; but then they do not mutter so much. (Laughter.) We do not want theological tyrants in the schools and we certainly should get them if we had these highly trained theologians.” The conference carried a resolution which appealed to the universities to give greater opportunities to teachers in training to take religious knowledge as one subject in their course for a degree.