A DANGEROUS WANT.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume X, Issue 504, 8 December 1882, Page 9

A DANGEROUS WANT.

(From tbe Dunedin Morning Herald.)

ApABT from mere political strife there is a very serious and important question, affecting the entire fabric of society, which demands t&e must earnest attention of thoughtful men. Not to affect mystery we will say at once it is the question of tbe moral training of the rising generation. Our wilful and perverse neglect—and indeed, it may well he called our open and avowed renunciation — of such training is the most patent evil of the present day. We have succumbed to the insidioua cry of " secular " education ; and, carried away by the popularity of that cry with the unthinking many, our representatives have devised and perfected a system which is bidding very fairly to produce a people absolutely without any moral restraint whatsoever. We have mounted a hobby and ridden it to death, la our blind and rash enthusiasm for secular education we have driven the Bible out of the schools, to the great contentment of ■nbelievers ; and we have not substituted even moral teaching in its place. Herein the disciples of Freethought are very much in advance of the religiously disposed part of our population. The rules of moral conduct are taught in the Lyceum, but not in our public schools. So also in schools belonging to the Catholic community, the essential elements of morality — we say nothing of religion in this connection — are sedulously inculcated. Thus do extremes meet. As for the rest of our people, they seem content to let their children grow up in entire ignorance of those principles, the prevalence or absence of which makes or mars the destiny of nations. Hence the growing disposition to larrikinism . We are not yet so badly off as some of the neighbouring colonies, amongst which Victoria has in this respect attained a " bad pre-eminence." But we gain no grain of comfort from this reflection, If careful note be taken it will be found that the degrees of thin new vice, larrikinism — bad, worse, worst— exist in the various colonies exactly in proportion to their seniority in the adoption of mere secular teaching in their pablic schools. Thns Victoria, having led the van ib the first to suffer severely. Onr turn will come in due time. It is air ady coming in fact. Our larrikins, though not yet of a very pronounced type, are already tbe despair of our magistrates, and there is every prospect of their increasing in numbers and deteriorating in quality. And for this great privilege the taxpayers are mulcted to the tune of half-a-million sterling annually. This is an evil so notorious that not a member of the community will venture to disavow it. The curious but unsatisfactory part of the matter is, that every cause of the evil but the true one is in turn suggested, and every remedy but the right one is in turn proposed. One gentleman, possessed of a more vivid belief in the inherent goodness of human nature than most men, lately propounded a severe course of gymnastics as a means of inculcatine moral proclivities. It is to be feared, how ever, that no amount of pedestrian exercise, or practising of " running high leaps," will provide the sound mind which is the fitting complement to the sound body. Others have suggested that special days and hours should be set apart for the teaching of moral conduct ; but would not the very means taken be antagonistic to the purpose aimed at ? If it be true — and how well we all know it to be true— that Men should be taught as if you taught them not, how much more does the poet's maxim apply to youths — to our future citizens, the fathers and mothers of tbe land ? To be of any effect, the teaching of moral principle must be so interwoven with the day's tuition as to be steadily, and as a matter of course, absorbed by the juvenile mind. It should be judiciously instilled, not clumsily applied. It should soften and penetrate like " the gentle dew from heaven," rather than overpower and indurate like a tropical thunder-storm. What chance of such ameliorating processes would be furnished by a rigid half-hour of decalogical teaching, or incomprehensible dogma ? The future of every nation, and the moulding of its destinies, is always in the hands of the presently existing generation. If the father eats sour grapes, what wonder if the teeth of the children are set on edge 1 Assuredly there is imminent danger of a declension in the character of our people unless some modification of our educational system takes place. It may be excellent from a purely educational point of view, though the pernicious system of " cram *' renders it doubtful whether it is not calculated to produce unsound minds in more unsound bodies. Bnt no amount of classical, or mathematical, or any other kind of knowledge will learn our boys and girls the pure amenities and desirable decencies of life. A man maybe pro* foundly versed in astronomical science, for instance, and yet be intirely ignorant of the application of the golden rule. And a woman —the future mother of children yet to be born, to help to fashion the destinies of New Zealand — may have a very accurate acquaintance with verbs and tenses, or even with scales and fugues, and still be unable to teach her child the simple truths which elevate the civilised man above the untutored savage. Are not these things anomalous ? In steering from the Scylla of sectarian teaching, have we not approached dangerously near to the Charybdis of immorality ? Can no middle course be found ? This is a problem worthy of all consideration. The construction of public works is a desirable thing — the construction of the human mind is more desirable. The reduction of the hours of labour within reasonable limits is a beneficial thing — the reduction of the propensity to vice and crime is more beneficial. The existence in office of a good Government is essential to our material welfare —the existence of a good people is more essential. Look at it how we will—regard it how we may— if only we can regard it with eyes undimmed by the films of prejudice, all must admit that our gigantic and costly system of education, lacking the one element of moral training is — if not a failure — certainly not a success.

A deformed little Frenchwoman, who has begged in the commercial part of New York for some years past, has lately retired, according to her own story, having saved £8,000.