PEOPLE’S COLUMN EDUCATION AND RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION.

Northern Advocate, 23 May 1928, Page 3

PEOPLE’S COLUMN

EDUCATION AND RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION.

[Our columns are open to the public for the discussion of matters of public coucern. We invite correspondence, hut do not identify ourselves ft Ith the views expressed by our correspondents. Letters must be written in ink and on one side of the .paper only. The real name and address of the writei must be attached to a letter, not necessarily for publication, but as a mark of good faith.—Ed.]

(To the Editor.) Sir, —I am venturing, with your permission, to re-open the above vexed question, in your columns, because 1 feel that so far only the circumference of the matter has been touched. The very catch phrase “Bible in Schools” has served to keep attention focused upon the least. important issue of the question, of which the crux is, to my mind, whether it is desirable to incorporate religious ideals in the system of national education or to ignore them. If the issue was kept clearly to this main point, I think there is no doubt but that the answer of a referendum on the question would overwhelmingly- support the inclusion of religious instruction in the curriculum. Every good citizen, and more especially, everyone who strives to live the Christian life, must surely hesitate at. the thought of the consequences that would follow a complete lack of religious training or instruction in the life of a whole community. There are three places where that (raining and instruction can be given: in the home, in the church and in the uchool. I place them in the order of their Importance. None can doubt that the place “par excellence” for the inculcating of religious ideals is the home. It is a regrettable feature of our modern life—and a sign of the times for those who are looking for Eiicli things—that the Home is in so many eases anything but a place in which religious training may be bad. And it seems merely a logical outcome of the lack of real religion in the education of the present adult generation that the homclifc of the youth of today is so often spiritually barren. The church is, in my opinion, the place of secondary importance after the Home —under ideal conditions. For the church’s function is not so much to “teach religion” as to be a channel for the.outflowing of spiritual power through its “services” for the “healing of the sick” in the community. *

'i'lle school comes third on the list, but plays a by no means unimportant part. Perhaps one of the biggest dangers accruing from a lack of the gentle influence of Christian idealism from education in the schools is intellectual arrogance, a coldly critical nature, a lack of tolerance and human sympathy and, worst of all, cynicism. If the homo 5s fulfilling its part in the educational scheme, its influence will he probably strong enough to counteract the evil tendencies of the school’s failure to perform its part. But only for a time. i£ore hours of the child’s life are spent in school than anywhere else: and hero, whore the imitative faculty of the young mind is constantly in action, on either the healthy work of horo-w r orship or the - unhealthy one’ of degradation: here, if the religious ideals which the parents have striven to set up are ignored, all the good work of the home is undone. May I suggest that the system in vogue in England, while not by any means ideal, is yet considerably in advance of the entire lack of any system in New Zealand. In the elementary and secondary schools under the various local educational bodies throughout the country, as well as in the vast majority of private and public schools, some form of religious "exercises” is adopted akin to the following. School is assembled, immediately after leaving the play grounds at fl o’clock in the large hall with which every school is provided: a hymn is sung by the whole school so assembled, conducted) by the headmaster, with music by one j or more of the teachers: the Lord’si prayer is repeated by all, followed 1 •sometimes by some special school l prayer instituted by the head. Then | the school break up into its separate j classes and begins the work of the | day. The first lesson, on one or more days a week, is the study of a passage of flic Bible—conducted by the teachers —for half an hour. At the close of lessons each afternoon, school assembles once more for a hymn and a piayer before dispersing, my own ri'( (diedion of those morning and evening hymns and prayers —leaving! out of account the lessons on the j Bible —is that they undoubtedly had j a great influence for good upon the schools with which f was associated “-an influence which I cannot help seeing is lacking in the average New Zealand school. It is, fo my mind, a very regrettable fact that so few schools in this country have an

assembly hall whore the whole school may meet. There is a great deal of good done in those gatherings by the mere fact of the whole school being together in the one plaee. A sense of unity and fraternity is unconsciously inculcated which is of great value in the conduct of the school. In conclusion, may I quote the words of a leading education reformer in India, Mrs Ivamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, in “The Hindu” of 2(Jth October Inst. "The absence of any idealistic or religious element in our sc holds has undermined us..more than

any missionary movement could have done. The art, literature and philosophy of a nation is preserved by religion, and vice versa. They are identical with one another; one cannot be realised without the other. The loss of our artistic expression is due to an education in which religion has no place. . . These words might, •without a too literal interpretation, be used to point a moral for Xew r Zealand. I am, etc., P.R.