BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 144084, 1 May 1913, Page 2

BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—l have no intention of entering into a controversy on the above subject, and I should have .taken no more than the cursory notice which anonymous letters deserve had not one (which ■ required a large portion of the alphabet to obscure the writer) in your issue of April 29 contained a fact of which I was hitherto in ignorance. It appears •the League asks that “ministers of religion ..a nd others may be allowed to give in' school hours to the children of their own faith that instruction which the State recognises as necessary, but omits to give. 1./'had thought the 'religious teaching was to be given by, the seoidar teacher, but not so; the school curriculum is to be upset while each exponent of divers faiths.gathers his flock under his individual wing. In the seventies, when the denominational ■ dy stent was in , vogue, the minister en-, tered the school at his__will and the secular instruction was obstructed and minimised. In consequence the people of New Zealand practically unanimous-, ly decreed that the parson, per se, should no longer be able to interfere with the secular instruction. We are ■ asked now, therefore, to revert to this ‘dual control, the very worst feature of the denominational-system. It must bo remembered that ministers are human. and when given an inch require an ell. The claptrap about children’s attention being diverted under present arrangements by hearing others at football and other “entrancing’’ games is bunkum. At secular work many classes •are in school while others are at play without injury. If ministers elect -to make their lessons “dry as dust,’’ :inattention resulting is their own causing. Children now are no different to their mothers and fathers of the seventies. and where an interesting lesson on Biblical subjects is to be given, even after regular school hpurs, there they will be in spite of other “euiranco-.■-nicnts.” But about the ministers. So ■surely as they legally enter the school during school hours, so. surely will the teacher have to alter his arrangements to suit their engagements, and so surely will the same old trouble be experienced. Again, if our alphabetical friend’s contention is correct, will not, under the proposed system, a large number of children work on their parents to represent that they have conscientious objections to the teachingof this or that minister, and so have the right to play “football or other entrancing” games while the lesson is in progress. While I have my pen in my hand I will, with your permission, state that in my letter I gave a little" personal history to show, that I had always been an advocate of religious instruction ' being ' given to the rising generation, and that I was not a novice in educational matters with antiBiblical views. I also spoke of our educational-system being the “admiration of the world”; probably all your readers except, perhaps, that one who requires a, quarter' of the alphabet to hide his identity, knew I meant the “educational” world, and I will refer him to the comments made in Australia, America, and Europe in ’educational works on that system on its ■initiation. And what is .our system. It is a system of free, secular, and compulsory education, by which each child in the State is trained to bo able to take its place in; the “body politic, and, further, which shall give all youths, even the noorest, acxess equally with the. richest to such further educational advantages as will allow all equally the chance to rise to' the highest positions in the Dominion or- elsewhere. There are many details in the working of the system visible to us which are not what we as individuals approve, as, for instance, the want of instruction in history,. but these incidental matters do not, subtract from tho grandeur of the structure itself, which it is to be hoped will be able to withstand the onslaught now ■ being made.—l am, etc., JAMES J. ELWIN.