RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 January 1942, Page 7

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

RIGHTS OF THE CHILDREN. In the discussion of the religious education question there seems to be a tendency, says the Bishop of Chelmsford in a letter to “The Times” (London) to overlook the people most intimately concerned —the children. We hear of the rights of the parents. My own experience has taught me that the proportion of parents in England who either know or care- what religious education is given to their children is notably very small, and that the proportion who care sufficiently either to investigate the kind of religious education given, or to remove their children from religious instruction is negligible. We hear of the rights of the teachers. Every sympathy should be felt for teachers who desire to maintain and increase the dignity of their profession, but I think they need to be reminded that their proud and paramount duty is to serve the childrn rather than to regard them as education fodder, their own special preserves which must be jealously defended in the teachers own interests against interference from without. The rights of the children include the opportunity to develop their religious instinct. In practical terms that means that just as every other ingredient for the development of the whole self is put therefore the child by the people who understand and value those things (music, art, handicraft, etc.), so the Christian religion should be offered to the child by those who understand and value it ,that is. by instructed and practising Christians. Could anything be more reasonable than this?