The Ten Commandments

Southland Times, Issue 12123, 1 May 1908, Page 4

The Ten Commandments

(To the Editor.) Sir, —It is reported that at last night'* meeting of the Middle School Committee one Mr Simon solemnly moved that " the committee take into consideration the question of procuring ‘Ten Commandment’ wall charts, one for each room.” urging, among other reasons fur doing so, that “the Wellington Education Board lias got them.’’ True, too true ; and the fact of the Wellington Board having them, and trying to force them on school committees, called forth the enclosed rather biting comments from, the pen of the able editor of “The Examiner "—-which I ask you to publish for the consideration of Mr Simon and other humourists of his Ilk It may be observed that some of Mr Collins’s remarks are capable of local application.—l am, etc., ARCADIAN. 2»th April.

(From " The Examiner ” of April Ist.) Whether the Wellington Education Board be lacking In the sense of humour or superlatively endowed with that sar - ing grace. It is difficult to E(ay. Quite recentlv that body has authorised the hanging up of a Scripture sheet, containing the Ten Commandments, in the schools of the Wellington district. Naturally, we quite agree that it Is highly improper that anyone should do any murder, or steal, or commit adultery, or covet his neighbour’s wife, or his man servant, or his maid servant. But the posting up of such commandments as these for the moral Improvement of children, whose ages don not exceed twelve or thirteen, certainly suggests that the Board authorising such a procedure must be composed of practical jokers of the very highest order. If this bo their idea of a fitting and proper way of introducing moral instruction into our State schools, we can only regret that the educational interests of such an important district should be in the hands of a Board so utterly devoid of any sense of proportion, and apparently of any sense whatever. The school committee at Pongoroa, it appears, absolutely refused to have anything to do with the sheet, or to permit it to be hung on their school walls. This action of the Pongoroa Committee was discussed by the Board, and the chairman suggested that more emphatic instruction should he sent to the headmaster to comply with the Board’s decision. This suggestion was not acted upon, and it looks as though some belated gleam of intelligence reached Hit members of the Board and prevented them from perpetrating this further piece of blundering folly. We can conceive of no greater crime against the children themselves than to treat them as so many potential thieves, murderers, and adulterers, for this they certainly aro not. To sear their young and pure minds by familiarising them with even the names of these offences would bo to do an injury to childish innocence that might never be effaced. There are many ways of encouraging even young children to live pure and sweet "liven, of developing In them the higher and nobler virtues, of cultivating the finer, and suppressing the baser instincts. We agree with Goethe that children havo no desire to commit these crimes ; they do not know of them, and to force such knowledge upon them by means of “Commandments” is to run tho risk of doing irreparable injury to their moral nature.