RELIGION IN SCHOOLS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23162, 7 October 1938, Page 19

RELIGION IN SCHOOLS

EMPHASIS ON CONDUCT HEADMASTER'S'CRITICISM [from oor own correspondent] LONDON, Sept. 8 The headmaster of Westminster School, Mr. J. T. Christie, addressing the Modern Churchmen's Conference at Loughborough, gave a warning about the wrong emphasis which might be imparted to religious teaching, particularly in public schools—the substitution of conduct for religion. "The public schools, like all thoroughly English institutions," he said, "give a vast importance to behaviour. All the powers of religion are enlisted on the side of good conduct, sermons are exhortations to play the game, confirmation is clearing-house for past failure and future resolves, and private prayers are an expanded version of 'Please make mo a good boy.' "I know this state of things is passing away. I also know how unfair it is as a description of what is going on. But much of it is still left, both in schoolboys and adults, and its effects are obvious. It substitutes conduct for religion; it forgefs that no religion has ever begun by proclaiming, 'You ought to do so and so'; it centres the mind on self, its failures and successes, and it supersedes the unattainable ideal of the Christian life by the eminently accessible ideal of the good fellow anil the gentleman, which may be low or may be high according to the varying tone of the community.

"Meantime religion itself is regarded as an extra, a cult for those who like that sort of thing. This substitution of ethics for religion is one of the worst and commonest betrayals of the religious ideal of education."