RELIGIOUS TEACHING IN STATE SCHOOLS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11987, 9 June 1902, Page 7

RELIGIOUS TEACHING IN STATE SCHOOLS.

TO TIIE EDITOR. Sir, — should very much liko to know what, those people who aro advocating Bibleteaching in State schools exactly mean by the phrase, "religious teaching?" If they mean tho teaching of tho Ten Commandments. the validity of which all civilised nations admit, the teaching of the Lord's Prayer, and of the Sermon on the Mount, to which also, I think, few will demur, then I should be very sorry to raise any objection thereto. But if they mean the introduction of special, unprovable and peculiar dogmas connected with hell, the devil, and variously interpreted plans of salvation, then, I think, many persons will strenuously objectobject on the mo,st serious "ground that such teaching would tend, most assuredly, if the experience of the best criminologists can be relied upon, to neutralise the effect of the moral teaching, and prove a most delusive basis for it. Most persons, I think, will admit that tho very basis of our civilisation depends upon the practice of morality—of what is right— of doing unto others what we would that they should do unto us. Tho safety and civilisation of a people is dependent upon tho latter's adjustment and obedience to the laws of God, which He reveals every day in the experience of men, and which he has not once for all revealed in a book. Teach a boy why he should not break a person's fence, or steal his apples or flowers: why he should not deface public notices, or injure public or private property; why he should not call names liko some of his elders' do: why he should show consideration to old age, and defend the weak; why lie should not bo cruel to animals: why he should not cheat or tell lies; why he should hear both sides; why people should not unnecessarily pi lingo into debt, and that they should pay their debts when they do; why we have police and magistrates; that wrong-doing has in some way to be paid for by persons and peoples in increased expense, taxation, and vexation. Such moral teaching is undoubtedly necessary in Nov/ Zealand, as it is everywhere else. Now, I know, that some such teaching is given by some schoolmasters, perhaps by all, the more honour to them. If some of the comparatively useless stuff that is ordered by authority, to be got by she teachers into the heads of children, and which they forget immediately they leave school, were displaced from the school syllabus, tho teachers of New Zealand would, I have little doubt, willingly devote the time thus gained to the far more important subject of moral teaching on some such lines as I have indicated above.— I am, etc., (i. Heaiky. Archhill.