A DAILY TRESPASS?

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24432, 18 October 1940, Page 6

A DAILY TRESPASS?

When the members of the Otago Education Board decided to recommend to the head teachers of Otago schools that the day’s programme should be commenced with the Lord’s Prayer, they were following the example of the Wellington Education Board. This board had previously agreed upon the Lord’s Prayer being recited in schools within its jurisdiction as a morning exercise. But the Otago Board was not aware that the Director of Education had frowned upon Wellington’s daily prayer as being, in fact, a daily trespass. The members of the local board had not, when they made their rash resolve to follow in the steps of their colleagues in Wellington, had the legal position clearly expounded to them. The letter containing the Director of Education’s ruling on the subject of prayer in schools, in which he indicates the enormity of this offence, was not before them. It is a letter that is remarkable both for a faultiness in its grammatical construction that should not be looked for in a communication from the fountain head of the educational system of New Zealand and also for the feebleness of the conclusion expressed in it. The salient passages in it are: “The provisions which refer to the authority of the board, which do not operate in the present instance, serve to emphasise that the board is purporting to enter a sphere in which the department alone has authority. The proposed instruction, therefore, can be of no effect, and I should be glad if the board would see that it is not pi'oceeded with.” The Otago Board might, perhaps, have acted very differently if it had had this lucid exposition before it when the question was introduced. Or again, it might not have. The Wellington Board, indeed, was singularly unimpressed by this, singular document, and by resolution decided to continue to sanction prayers in school anyway And since, as the letter makes clear, the board’s instruction to teachers to introduce prayers could “be of no effect ” —while, in fact, prayers by the time the letter was received were already in effect in Wellington schools — it was presumably neither within nor without its rights in deciding to ignore the enigmatic ruling. The Otago Board’s similar decision to recommend prayers in schools will, no doubt, be equally effective or ineffectual, according to the interpretation placed upon it, and upon the Director of Education’s letter. So that if the practice of introducing the school day with prayer is adopted throughout this district there need be no constitutional breach between the department and the local authority, and none will suffer. On the contrary, many, including the board members themselves, who decided also to commence their meetings with prayer, may be all the better for it.