MR. MUNDELLA ON THE LONDON SCHOOL BOARD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XX, Issue 6825, 2 October 1883, Page 6

MR. MUNDELLA ON THE LONDON SCHOOL BOARD.

Mr, Mundklla's address at the School Board fete, held at the Crystal Palace the other day, will surprise many people who have been in the habit of deploring the entire abseuce of religious teaching from the Board schools. After distributing the Scriptural knowledge prizes to the successful competitors, Mr. Mundella said that there were only two or three points to vrhich he wished to refer. In the first place, he wanted to impress upon those who did not realize what School Boards were the fact that Bince 1870 they had been doing work in regard to religious teaching which would scarcely be conceived, and which the religious bodies themselves scarcely understood. They wero constantly having such [ questions as this put to them : "Is the Christianity of the country worth preserving?' 1 and the conclusion to be drawu from writings on the subject was, that the Christianity of England was prejudiced by the teaching of the School Boards, while oth'-rs had urged that we were a Christian nation until the passing of the Act of 1870. Now he wished to point out that it was enacted that the Bible should be read in all schools provided by the Loudon Board, and that there should also be given such explanations and instruction as were to !>e drawn from such reading, provided no attempt was made to draw the children to any particular denomination. In proof that the London School Board had adhered to that, he could say that in the three years during which he had administered the Education Act he had only heard of one complaint, and that was in a ease in which the father and mother of the child differed as to the teaching of religion. In 1870 the number of children on the rolls of all the public schools of the Kingdom wan under 2,000,000, whereas the number now was 4,700,000, and the proportion of that number not receiving Scripture teaching was infinitesimal. Practically the whole of that number were receiving religious teaching. It might be said that the religious teaching giren in the Board Schools was not that which was desired; but he might say to those who advocated denominationalism that they had now more ! than double the religious teaching in these schools. Brcligious teaching before the Act of IS7O was, in a great nnmber of cases, religious teaching only in name, but since that time the Church of England had made the religious teaching from one end of the country to the other a solemn fact. She began by thorough organisation and diocesan inspections, the result of which had been that the teaching had improved enormously, and the work in the day schools was better done thaD in any previous period. The same remark applied to schools of every otherdenomination. Cardinal Manning, in a recent article in the Nineteenth Century, had warned them against falling into the system which prevailed in France, and in reference to that he could only say that he was surprised that so thoroughgoing an Englishman as Cardinal Manning should have arrived at so mistaken a conclusion. He (Mr. Mundella) had, through the Sunday-school Union, inquired into the Sunday-school working in England aud Wales, and he had found that there were 4,000,000 children on the register. In the Metropolis itself there were 270,000 in the Church Sunday-schools, in addition to which there were 150,000 iu the Roman Catholic and Wesleyan schools, making 420,000 in all. Those children were taught by over 30,000 teachers. He asked, was Christianity in danger so long as this sort of thing wa3 going on ? He congratulated the London School Board upon the increasing number of children coming to the schools every year; but at the same time he warned the teachers against being too ambitious, remarking that they could not expect children of the Fourth or Filth Standard to pass an examination which might prove troublesome to gentlemen going up for ordination.—English Exchange,