PROF. HUXLEY ON RELIGIOUS V. SECULAR EDUCATION.

Wellington Independent, Volume XXVI, Issue 3212, 30 May 1871, Page 3

PROF. HUXLEY ON RELIGIOUS V. SECULAR EDUCATION.

[From the Contbmpobary Review.] " We are divided into two parties — the advocates of so-called ' religious' teaching on the one hand, and those of so-called • secular' teaching on the other. And both parties seem to me to be not only hopelessly wrong, but in such a position that, if either succeeded completely, it would discover before many years were over that it had made a great mistake and done serious evil to the cause of education. For, leaving aside the more far-seeing minority on each side, what the ' religious' party is crying for is mere theology, under the name of religion ; while the ' secularists' have unwisely and wrongfully admitted the assumption of their opponents, and demand the abolition of all 'religious' teaching, when they only want to be free of theology. Burning your ship to get rid of the cockroaches ! But my belief is that no human being, and no society composed of human beings, ever did, or ever will, come to much, unless their conduct was governed and guided by the love of some ethical idea. Undoubtedly, your gutter child may be converted by mere intellectual drill into the subtlest of th" all beasts of the field ; but we know what has become of the original of that description, and there is no need to increase the number of those who imitate him successfully, without being aided by the rates. And if I were compelled to choose for one of my own J children, between a school in which real religious instruction is given and one without it, I should prefer the former, even though the child might have to take a good deal of theology with it. Nineteenths of a dose of bark is mere half- rotten wood ; but one swallows it for the sake of the particle of quinine, the beneficent effect of which may be weakened, but is not destroyed by the wooden dilution, unless in a few cases of exceptionally tender stomachs. Hence when the great mass of the English people declare that they want to have their children in the elementary schools taught the Bible, and when it is plain from the terms of the act, the debates in and out of Parliament, and especially the emphatic declarations of the Vice President of the Council, that it was intended that such Bible reading should be permitted, unless good cause for prohibiting it could be shown, I do not see what reason there is for opposing that wish. Certainly I, individually, could with no shadow of consistency oppose the teaching of the children of other people to do that which my own children are taught to do. And, if the reading of the Bible were not, as I think it is, consonant with political reason and justice, and with a desire to get in the spirit of the education measure, I am disposed to think that it might still be well to read that book in tho elementary schools."