THE RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS BILL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22328, 31 July 1934, Page 5

THE RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS BILL

TEACHERS' OBJECTIONS - (Communicated by the N.Z. Educational '-"•_'•' i Institute.). 11, CONSCIENTIOUS. ' r : ... ~_.-; ..'.,•• ■.. • ; f ' A medical man might .contract. to ? direct a hospital. If lie were called upon to overhaul the plumbing, he would [ object. Any British Court of Law would » uphold his objection. Probably it would i also point out how very undesirable it , was to turn even the most general-of : practitioners into a plumber. > '■ On behalf of teachers,' the New Zea- | land Educational' Institute raises the eame objections to the" new Re|igious ' Instruction Bill. The teaching., prpfefe- , aipn, by overwhelming majorities, ha 6 \ in the past objected to similar Bills; It was trained and appointed to minister , to mind and body. Now it is being asked i to tamper with the soul. 1 Everything essentially: Protestant' in the past 400 years of history protests against entrusting to laymen with no avowed vocation and no dedication to it the .performance of this sacred task. The past ;400 years of history have, moreover,' been in the main absorbed in liberating the Protestant conscience and making its most intimate spiritual life an exclusively private concern. Now this same conscience is to. be turned over to paid servants of a State secular to the i core —servants reluctant and unwilling to trifle with the spiritual issues that have always lain outside their province and profession. i The churches urging this measure would not entrust the teaching of the living truths, the central tenets of their common faith, to a Mohammedan or even to a Jew. Yet this would be no more extreme a step than confiding the reHgiPus teaching of the child to people neither called nor chosen, neither trained nor ordained to such work. , The religious teacher does not " pass something on"; he "gives of himself." The fatal danger of this Bill is that it will begin a system by which many wiU be cajolled into pretending to bestow what they themselves do not possess. The primary teaching profession is as honest and uncanting as any in the Dominion to-day. It has skill and insight. In so far as an obsolescent system permits, it ministers to those needs of the child that it was trained and appointed to care for. On behalf of this profession, the executive of the New Zealand Educational Institute, which has for over half a century had a. mandate from the service—a mandate thrice renewed in recent years—enters, its protest against this year's Beligious Instruction Bill. The protest is felt by,very many teachers to the roots of their being. It is profoundly felt by many deeply religious teachers. It is a protest against wantonly introducing an element of sham and humbug into child-teacher relations —sham which will vitiate the most precious element in those relations, trust and confidence on the part of the young mind in the genuineness of its instructors. It is a protest against the bringing into contempt of spiritual things. In this protest in its best period Protestantism of every variety of creed would have been the first to join. The protest is made with a full knowledge of the earnest motives of many of the protagonists of this Bill. It is urged on them to think twice whether the faith they hold sacred and the teachings that command their most sacred | respect should pass out of the hands of institutions dedicated and people. |

ordained to be purveyed by the State. If, indeed, the State is to take over the teaching of religion in the most wholesale way at the most important stage of spiritual growth, then all history will affirm that Protestantism is dead —that "its once mighty heart has ceased to beat." $