POWERS EXCEEDED

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21259, 1 November 1940, Page 2

POWERS EXCEEDED

PRAYER IN SCHOOLS INSTRUCTION BY BOARD (By Telegraph.—Press Association) WELLINGTON, Thursday “So much misunderstanding has arisen in the public mind as a result of a recent resolution of the Wellington Education Board regarding the opening of schools with the Lord’s Prayer that it would be well for me at this stage to make the legal position clear,” said the Director of Education, Dr. C. E. Beeby, in a statement tonight. “As the chairman stated at the meeting of the board, the question is not moral or religious, but purely legal. “I would stress that the Education Department is not and, as the law now stands, cannot be concerned with any other aspect than the legal one. Its only purpose in coming into the matter at all is to see that the law as it exists is not broken. The Education Act gives no power for the department to make regulations or the board to make bylaws, or for either body to issue instructions with direct reference to religious instruction or religious observances in schools. Use of Buildings “Section 49 (7) of the Act gives a local school committee power to grant as it deems fit the use of school buildings for the purpose of moral or religious instruction outside the hours of secular instruction,” said Dr. Beeby. “No body at all may direct or permit the giving of religious instruction by any teacher during school hours, or require a teacher to be present at the giving of such hours, nor can any child be corninstruction within or without school pelled to attend during any religious instruction at school which can by law be given only outside school hours. “A school committee cannot order that school be opened with the Lord’s Prayer. A school legally opens only when compulsory instruction begins and such instruction must be secular. Any teacher taking part in religious exercises in a school building before the school day opens does so not as a teacher, but as a private citizen. Instruction of no Effect “Quite apart from religious instruction,” said Dr. Beeby, “over which neither a board nor the department has any jurisdiction, the Act gives boards no power to determine the curriculum of public schools. Such powers lie entirely with the department. From any angle, therefore, it is obvious that the instruction issued by board to committees or teachers concerning religious observances in schools can be of no effect. “Religious exercises are quite legal in post-primary schools, which do not come under the section of the Act that makes similar practices illegal during school hours in public primary schools.”