The Lord's Prayer in Schools

Manawatu Times, Volume 65, Issue 259, 1 November 1940, Page 6

The Lord's Prayer in Schools

Education Board Acting Outside its Authority LEGAL POSITION MADE CLEAR Per Press Association. WELLINGTON, Oct. 31. “So mucli misunderstanding lias arisen in the public mind as a result of the recent resolution of the Wellington Education Board regarding the opening of school’s with tho Lord’s Prayer that it would be well for me at this stage to make the legal position clear,” said the Director of Education (Dr. C. E. Beeby) in a statement to-night. “As the chairman stated at the meeting of the Education Board, tho question is not moral or religious, but purely legal. I would stress that the Education Department is not —and as the law now stands, cannot be—concerned with any other aspect than the legal one. Its only purpose in coming into the matter at all is to see that the law as it exists is not broken. The Education Department is charged with administering the education system according to the provisions of the Education Act, and tho Act is quite definite on the points here involved. “The Act gives no power for the department to make regulations or a board to make by-laws, or for either body to issue instructions, with direct reference to religious instruction or religious observances in schools. Both bodies aro charged with the duty of administering a system of free, compulsory, secular education. Section 49 (7) of the Education Act gives a local school committee power to grant, us it deems lit, the use of school buildings for tho purpose of moral or religious instruction outside the hours of secular instruction. This is an absolute power conferred on a school committee and one with which neither a board nor the department has any concern. However, no body at all may direct or permit the giving of religious instruction by any teacher during school liours or require a teacher to be present at the giving of such instruction within or without school hours, nor can any child be compelled to attend any religious instruction at a school which can by Jaw be given only outside school hours. A school committee may, however, permit school buildings to be utilised outside school hours for the giving of religious instruction, even though it cannot demand that either teachers or pupils attend.

“<So a school committee, whilst it may provide buildings in which children can, if their parents so wish, be given religious instruction before the school day starts, cannot order that the school be opened with the Lord’s Prayer. The school legally opens only when compulsory instruction begins and such instruction must be secular. Any teacher taking part in religious exercises in a school building before the school day opens does so not as a teacher but as a private citizen. An education board has no standing whatever in the matter beyond power to fix within the limits allowed by the Act tho hours of opening and closing the school. “There is one other aspect I might mention, quite apart from religious instruction, over which neither a board nor the department has any jurisdiction. The Education Act gives boards no power to determine tho curriculum of public schools. Such powers lie entirely with the-department. From any angle, therefore, it is obvious that an instruction issued by an education board to committees or teachers concerning religious observances in schools cun be of no effect.

“It is, I presume, open to an education board to express the opinion that certain religious observances in schools would or would not be desirable, but such opinion does not alter tho legal position at all, any more than would a similar expression of opinion by any other group of citizens. “No board knowing the position would, I am sure, wish any such expression of opinion on its part to be wrong13' interpreted by school committees, teachers, parents or children as an instruction having an}' legal force. What ever either the Education Departm ..t or an education board may say cannot affect the absolute right of a school committee to determine whether or not school buildings are to be used outside school hours for religious instruction, and neither the department nor a board, nor a committee, can authorise religious instruction within school hours or force any teacher or child to take part in religious instruction in school buildings at any time. “The point has been made by some newspaper correspondents that no objections have been made to the opening religious exercises in post-primary schools. The answer to this is that such oxercises aro quite legal in post-primary schools, which do not come under the section of the Education Act that makes similar practices illegal during school hours in public primary schools.”