THE EDUCATION QUESTION.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 12607, 10 March 1903, Page 3

THE EDUCATION QUESTION.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—lt is greatly to bo regretted that at a timo whcn.thorc wero good grounds for hope of settlement on the Biblc-in-sehools agitation in eonsonanco with tho'dosiros of a large majority of ihe community a controversy so Itoen, acrid, and useless on, the English Education Act should 1 - divert tho attention of colonists from the pressing need of an amendment in our education system to permit-some degreo of religious education in our national schools. • With a fervour begotten of zeal without prudence, some of the leaders in tho Council of Churches have most prejudicially affected tho successful issue of tho latest spasmodic offorfc to got the Biblo reintroduced to the Echools. This they have'done by ignoring tho patent lessons so plainly taught in tho passing of th'o recent act by tho British Parliament, tho extreme difficulties that attach to tho satisfactory solution of religious education in public schools, and tho impossibility of any solution at all until the just and conscientious claims of tho Roman Catholics are fairly and righteously adjusted. On the very grounds of tho opposition of tho Nonconformists to tho act and their threatened passive resistance to tho payment of rate to be levied, tho Roman Catholio Church founds its claim for a separate grant. It argues, and entirely on the lines of the Rev. Mr Gibb and Mr Driver, that if tho Biblo in common use amongst Protestants is ■to be used in our schools with selectod parts and explanations thoreon made and directed by Protestant clergymen, there will be an undue and powerful influence granted towards the teaching of religious doctrines which it condemns and reprobates as detestable and untrue. Roman Catholics regard the Protestant Biblo as of no authority, and therefore they must, and will, strenuously oppose its introduction to tho public schools —schools which are carried on by a taxation falling upon all creeds alike! Is it reasonable to suppose that they will calmly go on supporting their own schools,' as they havo so nobly done for years, and pay without ;some strong passive resistance their share of taxes for tho propagation and strengthening of religious ideas and doctrines they condemn and repudiate? Surely we expect too much of a church that is not, and nover has been, backward in asserting its olaims for a fitting recognition. I cannot help referring to tho instructions of the Great Toaehor when lie sent forth His disciples into the world with this message to men: They wero to ho "wise as serpents and harmless as doves." It is abundantly and grievously evident that His representatives in Otago at least havo neither the ono quality nor tho other. They have blundered into a disoussion on a topio that for a. season might woll have been left alone, and exposed the thin veneer that for a while covered the underlying antagonism to the Anglican Church. They havo iu their haste engendered feelings of distrust and hate amongst tho various denominations that will not easily or soon bo allayed. 'It js abundantly evident that unless a surcease be made, and at once, of tho unseemly and unbrothorly attitudo towards other churches the leaders of Council of Churches will not witness in their time of grace tho Bible an open book in our national schools. I deeply regret this hopeless conclusion, for I havo been for years a persistent; and not always a silent, advocate for the admission of the Grand Old Book to tho echools, where the nationality of New Zealand is permeated and influenced towards good or evil by the literature in use therein. Secularism and the tags and scrags of information that aro supplied to the children of New Zealand are no foundation for that "righteousness whioh exalteth a nation."—l am, etc., March 2. As Octogen'akian. /