RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS BILL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22329, 1 August 1934, Page 4

RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS BILL

TEACHERS’ OBJECTIONS (Communicated by the New Zealand Educational Institute.) lII.—EDUCATIONAL. The new Bill provides for “observances” and for religious “instruction.” It is implied and no doubt believed by the genuine protagonists of this measure that forms and utterances and the mere exposition of biblical meaning can fulfil an essentially religious purpose. Otherwise would they be prepared to place the ministration of their measure in the hands of a profession which, while having its own ethic, is just as mundane as any other secular calling? No educationist to-day would accept the view of the advocates of the Religious Instruction Bill at present before the House. An educationist would first stress the “ atmosphere ” of the desired instruction. If it is mundane, if it is made up of formulas and observances prescribed by regulation and carried out without conviction by people officially employed for quite other purposes, this atmosphere far from enhancing religious conviction will most surely tend to the “ profanation of things holy.” Every child reacts emotionally to his teacher’s attitude. Most of all does he do so in subjects like religion, which, if truly taught, make their strongest appeal to imagination and feeling. In other words, in dealing with such subjects a teacher “ infects ” the child with his, own mental states. One need M t hesitate to say that to-day teachers, like the rest of the community, are in the main “ secular minded.” This being so, the feeling tone of religious instruction in schools (so called) is a foregone conclusion. Supporters of the Bill aim at a revival of what they believe to be the essence of religion. They should remember the warning against having “ a form of Godliness but denying the power thereof.” What is Christianity? In its pristine and most potent form it never was and never could be a State religion. Official teaching and enforcement of State ritual and observances were the mark of the decadence of the Roman Empire. The antithesis of education is to do and to say in the name of belief what you do not personally believe or do. Religion is just as ex elusively a personal matter ns marriage. Its root is a deep personal conviction. Falsity docs not creep in, it arrives by a frontal attack when the teacher is asked to pass on, as personally true lo himself, a form of religion that has never had his personal adhesion. Feeling this, the best, if not also most, teachers will decline to betray in a fundamental matter their trust to the young minds given inward to them.

The institute has no more important task than the safeguarding of the personal integrity of the profession. It cannot, in a matter of more vital importance than any, allow the profession to be the medium of passing on as whole cloth what never was, nor will be, anything but the sorriest of shoddy. MiPon. greatest of Protestants, speaks of “ hungry sheep ” that “ look up and are not fed.” ■ Nothing is more repugnant to the true teacher (and of these, given real opportunities, there are plenty) than under the guise of the living word to transmit to his pupils the husks of a dead verbalism.