THE BIBLE AND THE SCHOOLS.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 14341, 10 July 1914, Page 8

THE BIBLE AND THE SCHOOLS.

TO THE KDITOl?. Si;-, The cool effrontery of your cor-’.■e-pondeut, “St. Michael,” is astounding when 'no writes;—“ The Bihle-in-Sehools League's proposals arc so fair and e'|Uititblo to nil parties as to be unanswerable." Whv, Si'-! the whole business is a piece 1 1 1 wig-antic bluff In begin with, backed up bv ;■ lot of assertions garlanded by interested and hia.-sed, or coerced wituosr.es. In the first place, the so-called sunr-ort of many of the churches was obtained on the Mreugth of two or throe per cent, of their congregations. Tu one iustauco. in a church membership of something like six or seven hundred, ten members turned up to give I heir weight to this momentous change in our school management. They fell us that it works smoothly in Ansfrail a, and that the teachers sneak well of it. when with all their efforts they have succeeded in persuading only 03 teachers to give evidence, out of no less than in.KiM teachers involved. Not. 1 par cent., as you perceive! And wo must not torcot that, in none of the States of the Commonwealth, are the teachers allowed fo express their opinions publicly, excepting in Xew South Wales, and th.cn only after -rearing permission of the Minister for Public Instruction. It appears that the l!ible Is between two stools, and in the danger of anything that is placed in such a position. Here are the paid Ministers trying to persuade the State to do tapir work tor them. and. on the other hand, we Mud the teachers do not take their duties at all seriously, hut perform them in a more or less perfunctory manner. If we look further, for positive evidence, we find in the report of the education Commission, recently furnished by the Commissioners, .Messrs Knibb and Turner, who spent about two years in investigating the systems of r.urope and America, sr.cn weighty words as these, referring to tin- much belauded system advocated by i i-e-r Bible-in-Sehools people: “The present system is seriously defective in regard to its scheme of influencing the ideals of childhood, and yet in any true educe,l ion the cultivation of noble ideals is of transcendent importance.” The reportfurther says: “It is desirable that denude instruction in ethics should be given as part of the general programme. I or this purpose the scheme of France mav well be taken as a model." And this is what- it comes to—that the best authorities in Australia, after burying the Xew South Wales system of Biblc-iu-Sehools teaching- in a grave of well-merit-ed contempt, recommends the State to adopt Ihe system followed in France.— L am. efc.. 'PAR EXT.