DR. RICHARDSON'S TEMPERANCE LESSON BOOK.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9220, 24 November 1888, Page 3

DR. RICHARDSON'S TEMPERANCE LESSON BOOK.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, — protest has been made against my expressing an opinion on any subject outside the si mere of mathematics. Those who make such protests are bound to show their own superior right to speak ; but surely free speech is the right of all citizens, and men who strive to check utterances which happen to be distasteful to themselves, are adopting the worn-out tactics of the Inquisition and the Index. Those who are trying to force the public to submit to the inculcation of teetotal sentiments at the public expense, on the ground of the good which would be effected, ought to welcome, nay, to seek, the free expression of opinion from all sections of the people. Without entering into the question of the reality of the benefits expected from teetotal teaching, it may be pointed out that, in the opinion of a large number, perhaps of a majority, _of the community, the use of the Anglican catechism would be attended with even greater good. But the people have decided that neither this, nor any other summary of religious faith and practice, shall be admitted in the national schools. The decision is based on the conviction, arrived at after centuries of strife, that to force even a small minority to pay for, or in any way support, teaching of which they do not approve, is unjust, and that the effects of injustice will in the long run far more than outweigh any apparent good which may immediately ensue Teetotallers are seeking power to compel all children to receive as dogmas statements whicu many parents believe to be untrue, and they also desire to make the parents pay for this instruction, both through the Education tax, and through the subscription to total abstinence organisations involved in the purchase of a large number of books. I can hardly understand how any teetotaller who loves justice can bear to be placed without protest in such a position. Injustice is wrong, and its fruits are bitterest to those who are guilty of it. My remarks on Dr. Richardson's standing as a scientific man have given umbrage. One correspondent makes me say that Dr. Richardson "only did what he was paid lor as a teetotal advocate." I said no such thing. I did say that "he owes his present position and popular scientific reputation almost entirely to the fact that he has devoted himself, to his own great pecuniary advantage, to the business ot a professional teetotal advocate." And this statement is confirmed rather than confuted by the letters of your correspondents. The list of Dr. Richardson's achievements, given in the extract from Men of the Time, seems to have struck your correspondent with awe, but all who are familiar ivitli the notices of scientific man which appear from time to time in Nature and other scientific journals, know that, so far as concerns real work and distinctions from bodies capable of appreciating it, there are many men who could rival or surpass that list. Yet these men often have no popular scientific reputation; their names do nob appear in Men of the Time, because they have not, like Dr. Richardson, devoted themselves to the service of a large popular organisation. Dr. Richardson's textbook is the speech of the advocate on one side, not the calm summing up of the judge when both sides have been heard. What right, in justice, then have his adherents to force his views on all, as if he were the infallible physiological Pope, from whose decisson there can be no appeal ? I gave se\eral reasons for objecting to the use of Dr. Richardson's book, with extracts to justify each assertion. The work contains many examples of illogical, and, therefore, unscientific, reasoning; a groat deal of imaginative romance in place of history ; a quantity of matter which would be absolutely unintelligible to children -without diagrams and experiments; it is full of long words where short ones would do; it instructs children to think themselves wiser than their elders. It contains thus almost every fault from which a school book should be free, and ought, therefore, to be banished from the list of books permitted in the public schools. The resolution of the Board of Education directs the use of Dr. Richardson's Temperance Lesson Book for standards IV., V., and VI. For standard 111. another book, " First Steps to Temperance," is enjoined. Two extracts will show that this is no better than the other. On page 7 we read, addressed, it must be remembered, to young school children " Whenever your father or mother says to one of you 'Do this,' or ' Don't do that,' you are almost sure to say directly 'What for?' or ' Why not?' and when a reasonable answer is given, you are satisfied, and do as you are told willingly." "Well, tills is quite right; it is exactly as it should be." That is to say. young children in the third standard are to set themselves in all cases to be satisfied that their parents' commands are reasonable before they obey them. And this teaching is to banish larrikinism ! Again, on page 53 - ,} You can see well enough by now what a mistake it is to have anything at all to do with strong drink." "It is needless, foolish, wasteful; and, being all these, it is sinful." Again I ask, is it just that persons who believe that beer or wine or brandy are sometimes useful, should be forced 'to pay for having their children taught that every time sick persons have a glass of wine or a sik>ouful of brand they are guilty of sin? Many rigid teetotallers allow that alcoholic liquors are useful medicinally at times. How can they, with any regard to truth, help in the attempt to force such teaching as the above into our public schools? The appropriation of the word temperance" to describe the subject of these books is a piece of arrogant assumption, worthy of the worst traditions of medieval ecciesiasticism, while the attempt to obtain public support to the teaching of extreme teetotalism under the protection of that word, does not differ much from the common crime of endeavouring to obtain monry under false pretences. It is not, temperance which it is i proposed to teach, but something quite difi ferent—the dogma of total abstinence from alcohol as the panacea for almost all evil.— am, &c. W. SteAdman Aldis.