BIBLE-IN-SCHOOLS QUESTION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12856, 3 May 1905, Page 6

BIBLE-IN -SCHOOLS QUESTION.

MANIFESTO. BY STATE SCHOOLS

Defence league.

PROPOSED TEXTBOOK CONDEMNED

[HY* ■IKT.KORAI'H.'—OWN CORRESPONDENT.]

' ' Wellington-, Tuesday. Thk State Schools Defence League, the object, of which is to maintain-the present system of free, compulsory, and secular education in the primary schools, as provided by the Education Act of 1877, is issuing an able manifesto on the subject of the Bible in school text-book. I aw indebted to Mr. Arnold Atkinson, the hon. secretary of, Hie league, for an advance proof-of the manifesto, of which J giv-i a summary.

The league points out that "The reason why the Bible has been excluded from the curriculum of our public schools is not that the people of New Zealand, or any appreciable proportion of them, believe the Bible to be a bad 'book, but because, while recognising it and leveling, it, as) (he best of hooks, a majority of them consider that religion is a matter of which the State cannot undertake the teaching without violating the rights of conscience oj many of its .members, and that to attempt to teach the Bible, or any portion of it, in the State school-, would rend our educational system with sectarian strife, from which its disintegration in the form of denominationalism would be the only escape."

SEVERE CRITICISM. of THE TEXTBOOK.

The manifesto then deals with the promised text-book in. a severely-critical manner. It points out that the suggestion that the lessons selected have no specifically religious character, but merely embody the necessary basis of all religious and all ethical teaching " is absolutely unwarranted, and can only be explained by entire ignorance, either of the contents of the 'book its-elf, or of the doubts, difficulties, and differences with which the minds of good citizens and good christians have long been agitated. .Some striking omissions in the text-book are noted. Probably the most remarkable omission is that of the special lesson on " Drunkenness a sin against God and our fellow men. and a wrong and insult to ourselves, based on the I. Kings xx. 1-12, 16-21; Proverbs xxiii, 19-23, 29-35; and Isaiah xxviii, 1-7. No dogatic or critical difficulties wore raised by this lesson, and it is presumably from its relation to another burning question of the day. which it is not for the league to discuss, that the one lesson proposed by the Victorian Commission for the specific teaching, not of total abstinence, but of temperance, has been deemed unsuitable for the schools of New Zealand.

• CREATION OF THE WORLD. . The- difficulty of explaining the creation of the world in six days is dealt with, at •some'length, and the Dean of Westminster is quoted in this connection as adverse to the literal interpretation. He is also quoted regarding the origin of man, us follows: —'* The second chapter of Genesis no longer means to us that God moulded clay into a, human figure, and breathed upon it, or that lie took a rib from Adam and made 'Eve. These, and many other stories like that of' the talking serpent, or the talking ass, we do not take (or at any rate most of us—l do not) as literal statements of historical facts, but as imagery, which clothes certain spiritual truth" (Times, October 17, 1904). "The views thus boldly proclaimed by the Dean of Westminster," adds the manifesto, may or may not be as general in his own Church as he declares, but his expression of them has certainly caused much.pain to many of its members." It is then pointed out that : the text-book takes the literal view that there-is no comment, and that a child who learns the first • lesson in the volume without contradictory or explanatory gloss, will believe that the world was made in six days of 24 hours each. Later scientific knowledge, acquired perhaps in the physical geography lessons at the same school, may teach him something different, and it is obvious that if the foundation laid in his first religious lesson should be cut away, the whole of the superstructure may be seriously imperilled. THE TEACHERS' POSITION. .■The effect upon the teachers of. the introduction of such lessons into the curriculum, also, it is stated, deserves to be more particularly "considered. A conscientious teacher, who, like the Dean of Westminster, is. unable to accept the stories of the creation, of the making of woman from the rib of man, and of her deception by the serpent, according to their literal meaning, will refuse to teach as the truth what he believes to be false, and lie must make way for a successor who is loss critical, or perhaps less scrupulous in expressing the result of his criticism. Regarding the proposed conscience clause, which will give a teacher a theoretical protection in such a case, it is stated that though this provision would enable linn to plead conscientious objection as a sufficient excuse for declining to give the lesson, there would be. absolutely nothing I to prevent the education board, the school committee, and the parents from securing L the removal of any teacher availing himself of the privilege, and therefore the practical operation of the clause would be as a religious test, and nothing else. " Are we going," says the league, " to add the interpretation of Scripture to the duties of school committees "and education boards, and allow heresy hunts to be their diversions?'' THE NEW TESTAMENT. 'The New Testament problem and the element of miracle in-connection with the textbook are dealt with at length in. separate paragraphs. It is pointed out that some of the miraculous circumstances attending the birth of Jesus are fully recorded, but not the virgin birth itself, an omission which has brought upon those responsible the charge of " unitarian bias," but is quite clearly to be justified by the unsuitableness of the subject, matter for children on physiological grounds alone. On the other hand, the narratives of the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the* ascension, are set out-in full in three different versions.

In conclusion, tne league express the opinion that the broad minds, the tolerant ami scholarly spirits, and the worldly good sense of the men who have shaped the clerical party's recent declaration of policy, have had very little to do with the shaping ol this book.' In the 10 years for which the agitation has lasted the party has never yet found time to devote any independent thought to the compilation of the text-book which is at once to revolutionise our educational system and to give the mind of childhood its hist introduction to the highest of all knowledge. Thej have made two attempts to till the gap, and in each case if. is a ready made and an imported article that has been relied upon for the purpose. In 1896 they borrowed from New South Wales the barbarous and antiquated Irish Scripture text-book, which, after a. brief struggle, the indignant public opinion of the colony consigned to the dust heap, and the book which they have now accepted, almost as blindly, from Victoria must go the same way. Each ;s a hopelessly, impracticable attempt to solve an "absolutely insoluble problem.