RELIGION IN SCHOOLS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19062, 6 July 1925, Page 11

RELIGION IN SCHOOLS.

VIEWS OF DEAN BURROUGHS. SECULAR SYSTEM CONDEMNED. " WORSHIPPING A FETISH." Surprise at what he termed "the fetish of secular education in New Zealand" was expressed by the Very Rev. E. A. Burroughs, Dean of Bristol, in the course of an interview on Saturday. Besides being the author of a number of works on religious topics of the day, Dean Burroughs is the editor of Education and Religion, a volume of lectures delivered in Bristol Cathedral by some of England's greatest scholars and educational thinkers. It seemed to him that the secular system of education in New Zealand was a very real hindrance to the religious life of the country, and it was with astonishment that he found it worshipped, as ho said, in high places. Two things he had noted about the conditions under which tho Church was working in New Zealand. One was the difficulty of meeting the needs of widelyscattered populations, and tho other was the "frightful obstacle imposed by secular education." It seemed to bo a suicidal policy in this twentieth century. It was especially dangerous at a time when a great deal was being heard of the universal love of pleasure. However harmless when wisely taken, pleasure drove out the senst of duty when once it obtained a hold, and when the sense of duty, which was conscience, was lost to a community, any kind of real progress ceased. What was called material progress then became a hindrance to spiritual development. "There is a saying of Ruskin's which needs to be pondered by all who are interested in national development," said Dean Burroughs: " 'All the great ages have been ages of faith.' No civilisation is worthy of the name until it becomes creative, and although a certain amount of time must be allowed for the spade work of the pioneer before a new nation can reach its flowering time, it is rather disquieting when the upvard growth seems to bo developing more liberally than flowers. The only way to correct this is to build the character of youth upon a strongly-developed conscience, so that men will in all things put duty first and pleasure afterwards, exactly as every man worth his salt did during the war. In those days we learnt the electric and revolutionary effect of a great ideal accepted by the conscience of a whole community. The function of religion is to do permanently what the war did for a short time." The slump in idealism since the war proved that idealism alone was not enough. As Dr. Inge; Dean of St. Paul's, had said: "It is the function of religion to prevent the fruits of the flowering times of the spirit from being lost." If that were so, and he believed any student of history would bear him out, then it certainly seemed amazing, not so much that secular education should have been introduced during the materialistic period at the end of the nineteenth century, when religion and science were at loggerheads, but that, after all that had been learned since thon of the fatal consequences of materialism, there should still be any opposition to religious education in a country like New Zealand, which boro its part in the war so fully and therefore had a chance of learning that central lesson. " I understand that Mr. Isitt's bill is to be reintroduced in the Dominion Parliament before long," said the dean. "It would, I confess, be a rather ominous sign for the future of New Zealand if it were again thrown out." At Home, the whole question of national religious education was being reviewed with, ho believed, a good hope of reaching an agreed scheme by which religious instruction would form a necessary part of the curriculum of every school, and be administered by duly qualified teachers. " We, of course, have never had secular education." he added, although the quality of the religious instruction in tho council schools depends at present very much on the local authority and on the teachers themselves. At any rate, the principle of the necessity of religion is recognised by tho State, and that is the all-important thing."