EDUCATION.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 3, 17 May 1873, Page 5

EDUCATION.

The question cf education gives a great deal of trouble to statesmen everywhere. Why should this be ? In reality, the principle of the question is a simple one; and the chief difficulty is in finding the pecuniary means of maintaining a sufficient number of schools. Yet, strange to say, the trouble of rulers arises not so much from the real difficulty as from the simple principle. If the state would confine itself to its own duties, and loyally recognise the duties and rights of parents and the church, justice would soon secure the peace of society and the progress of civilisation. -' The education of their children belongs to parents as, .

duty and a right, subject to the control of the church to the extent necessary for the preservation of their faith Whoever or whatever usurps this duty and invades this right commits a crime against nature, justice, and the Divine Positive Law. This, however, is precisely what the world of the last half of the 19th century is practically endeavoring to deny. An effort is now being made by the state to supersede parents and place itself in reference to children in toco parentum, and to withdraw education from even the least control on the part of the church. Mixed or secular schools are offered to us, and every device is resorted to for the purpose of uprooting Catholic schools. In one place open force is employed in another, the process of starvation. The latter recommends itself to the statesmen and legislators of New Zealand. Here in Otago, in Canterbury, Wellington, and Auckland they hesitate not, ueither do they blush to, wring taxes out of the pockets of Catholics, which they employ in sapping the faith of their children and undermining their schools. And yet this is called a free and liberal country ! But the advocates of mixed and secular schools say : We do not interfere with your religion, and cannot reading, writing, arithmetic, and ssich things be taught independently of religion ? Well, then, in the first place we ought to know our own religion better than those who are not of us ; and we can assure these gentlemen they interfere with our religion—and that tyrannically, too -in endeavoring to compel us into an acceptance of mixed or godless systems of education. But apart from this c. nsideration, what doeo this answer of our opponents amount to ? VV hy, it concedes that, as to superior education, an injustice is done us ; and yet they do not setm disposed to make any effort to redress this grievance. Now, education separated from religion, even were such a thing possible, is precisely the very thing to which Catholics object; and their objection rests on conscientious grounds, as is abundantly proved by the sacrifices they make to save their children from the contamination of mixed and secular or godless schools. The question is not one merely of theory ; and in spite of what theorists think feasible, practically there never has been and there never cau be such a thing as a purely secular system of (education. If a system exclude religion, it must inevitably teach infidelity or indifferentism. Experience has proved this to be a fact, et contra faclum non licet argumentarl Moreover, every fairly instructed Christian, when he reflects on the opposition there is between religion and the world, man's proneness to evil, and the long and difficult training required to instil truthfulness into the tender mind, cannot fail to see that it must be so. Reason and experience unite in proving that a nation trained in godless schools must become a godless nation. Educate a people in such schools, and the time cannot be far distant when the world will, in all probability, be startled at beholding once more the Goddess of Reason, the arena, the amphitheatre, the gladiators ; and the end will be a brutalised people. The world saw with horror something very like this in the great revolution in France, and more recently in the Paris Commune. For these reasons Catholics endeavor to establish everywhere Catholic schools ; and they make great sacrifices in order that they may not by neglect or otherwise become accomplices in the ruin not only of faith, but also of civil society. They are anxious to do their part towards the saving of both ; and yet, strangest of all strange things, the very men who are the most strictly bound to watch over the preservation and stability of the civil order are the men who are most busily engaged in trampling on Catholics, defrauding them of their rights, plundering their property, and endeavoring by every means, even the most nefarious, to drive their children from the guardianship of the church into dens of godlessness. The Provincial Council at Wellington is now busily engaged in trying how it can throw dust in people's eyes ; and whilst doing so, withhold substantial aid from Catholic schools. In the Council at Christchurch, the godless party is still more shameless — tbey openly proclaim their determination to withdraw aid from, we believe, the only one Catholic school that had hitherto received a little assistance. As to Otago, the Council here would seem to be beyond the pale of common sense. Our system of education is a monopoly, which endeavors to stamp out rivalry, and which, whilst proclaiming its own perfection and spending large sums of public money gallantly, reduces its schools to a low level of a

dull mediocrity, and ends in an inability to supply even one candidate for the provincial scholarships, and in a commission of enquiry.