SECULAR EDUCATION.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VI, Issue 311, 4 April 1879, Page 13

SECULAR EDUCATION.

The indications which go to prove that the system of secular education established in New Zealand is hypocritical, and only secular in name, are multiplying fast. x'he chief, so-called secular school in Wellington is in reality a Church of England school. In this school the teachers give religious instruction, and have always done so. In Auckland a schoolmaster has habitually caused his pupils to sing Sankey and Moody's hymns ; and, when remonstrated with, coolly told the remonstrants that the Catholic children could withdraw from the singing if they pleased. In Canterbury a schoolmaster writes to one of the newpapers to say that he had been recommended by the committee of the school over which he presides to the Board for appointment to this school, because he had previously arranged with the committee to say prayers and read the Bible in school, as his predecessor had done belore him. The hon. member for Akaroa, who declares he will oppose subsidies to denominational schools, has, in the same speech in which he made this declaration, pointed out to school committees how the law may be evaded, and secular schools converted into schools of all Protestant denominations. The late Superintendent of Canterbury, Mr. Kolleston, in his recent speech to his constituents, told them that the law of secular education had been evaded in that Province, and the Bible read, and religious instruction given, in the school, in the teeth of the law. We have no doubt whatever that these manifestations of practices prevailing in so many provinces are only a few out of the many similar cases that exist throughout the country. This is the state of things which we Catholics are compelled to pay for upholding, whilst our own schools are denied all aid out of the monies we contribute towards the maintenance of education. Surely secularism as it exists in New Zealand is a farce, a hypocrisy, and a crying injustice. It is now showing the hoof and horn which so much pains had been taken to conceal. We were never deceived as to its nature, and inevitable working. But now the most confiding and dull can not be hoodwinked. Secularism is only a cloak tor the most rampant, unjust, and one-sided denominationalism. Its one object is to deprive Catholics of education, so far as this can be effected by the State, or to compel them to accept such education as must endanger their faith and morals. Secularism does not so much intend the education of the people as the destruction of the Catholic faith.