The New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. FRIDAY, MARCH 11, 1898. INSPECTION OF CATHOLIC SCHOOLS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXV, Issue 45, 11 March 1898, Page 17

The New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. FRIDAY, MARCH 11, 1898. INSPECTION OF CATHOLIC SCHOOLS.

fOME people's minds work topsy-turvy, even in discussing subjects of practical importance. They start at the wrong end of things. This is especially the case where there is a question of extending a popular right which it is in the interest of a privileged class to withhold. The movements in favour of Emancipation, Parliamentary Reform, and the various Irish Land Bills, furnish instances in point. Opponents affect to regard the right either as non-existent or as a mere privilege, involving no question of principle. They damn it with question-begging epithets. They bolster up thfir refusal by prophecies and pretexts rather than by reasons which touch the bone and marrow of the subject in dispute. Such is precisely the attitude of the opponents of the State-inspection of Catholic schools in this Colony. The subject has been brought into great prominence in Christchurch through the able and cogent case which the Very Rev. Father Cummings, V.G., has made out for the inspection of the Catholic schools which lie within the jurisdiction of the North Canterbury Board of Education.

The position has become stereotyped. None the less it behoves the Catholic body to keep their claims full square before the public eye. The question dealt with by Father Connxos affects a great body of Catholics over a wide area of this Colony. Four Boards of Education — those of Wellington, Auckland, Taranaki, and North Canterbury — h.ive refused point-blank to accede to the request of the Catholic hierarchy for tlic inspection of their primary schools. The Haukcs Bay Board agreed to leave the matter to the sweet will of their inspector, just as the spineless Act of Parliament had previously placed a similar discretion in the hands of the Education Boards themselves. And we know what happens when business is committed, in half-contemptuous fashion, to the leisure hours of a deputy's deputy : the Urcek Kalends will not sec it done.

Meantime the willy-nilly Section 1)8 of the Act has led to a pretty state of confusion. Eight of the thirteen Boards of Education in the Colony have recognised the Catholic demands. Four have in set terms refused to do so. The thirteenth still sits up on a rail. And in the sweet by-and-by what is there in the nature of things to prevent the whole " baker's dozen " of them from ringing all the changes of refusal, grant, withdrawal, and making the confusion still worse confounded ? One expects a statute to act with the cold and firm and even pressure of a glacier in its bed. The present state of confusion could never have been contemplated either by the framers of Section 98 or by the Parliament that passed it. It would be absurd to suppose that Parliament meant none of the Boards to order the inspection of the private schools. The mind of the author of the Education Act may be safely taken to indicate the mind of the House. The Hon. C. C. Bo wen said in IH'J-t that private schools should " claim as a right the advantages of State inspection, should they see fit to ask for it." Section 98 of the Act provides for such inspection, but leaves the granting or refusal of the "right" to the discretion of the several Boards. As the Act is administered it thus, in a manner, takes away with its left hand what it has given with the right. As the section stands, the gift may never be granted over wide areas of New Zealand. Even where it is granted, it is of uncertain tenure. A breath of popular

excitement might, at any time, lead to its withdrawal all over the Colony. The gift is like Moore's bird in the story, till such time as we can grasp and hold it, and call it our very own — and this can only be when the State inspection of private primary schools is made compulsory by Act of Parliament.

The old cry — " tampering with the Education Act "—" — with which old women of both sexes used to alarm themselves, can find no place in this connection. The other objections to the State inspection of Catholic schools are ably handled by the Very Rev. Father Cilvmtngs in his letters to the North Canterbury Education Board and to the Lyttleton Times. A healthy sign of the times is the attitude taken up in the matter by the Press, which, in a leading article, makes out a strong case for the 114 Catholic schools in the Colony, with their 10,458 pupils. It points out the heavy cost which Catholics are under in building and maintaining their schools ; the increased burden of which they have relieved the general tax-payer ; and estimates that the Catholics of New Zealand contribute annually about £GO,OOO to the support of a system from which, for conscientious grounds, they can derive very little advantage. Facts and figures such as these cut the ground from beneath the feet of those who make the question of expense a pretext for the denial of a right to the Catholic body of the Colony. In this matter we take our stand on the ground of absolute right in justice, which a mere flaw in the wording of a Section cannot set aside. We do not come as mere suppliants for either a privilege or a favour.

Another phase of the question of expense is ably handled by " Citizen," who writes to the Lyiiletoa Times. " The Catholic children," says he " are prevented attending Government schools wholly and entirely on conscientious grounds, as they believe their moral and religious training would be neglected by so doing. Not so those attending private schools. Their main reasons are mostly, if not entirely, personal ; either they don't care to associate with children attending Government schools as beneath their social standing, or they aspire to a more advanced tuition than that imparted in the public schools. Besides, they don't need, neither do they ask for, Government inspection. . . . The Catholic schools (which are open to all denominations) are the nearest possible adjuncts to the Government institutions. Consequently the public should not only approve of having these educational establishments examined in secular subjects, but they should insist, if only for the sake of the 10,4.")(.) children attending them, that they are receiving necessary and efficient tuition ; (and this can only be obtained by (lovernment inspection of these schools." "This matter of expense," writes he in conclusion, " is a red herring, not always so handy when other educational improvements are being mooted." It is to be earnestly hoped that the North Canterbury Board of Education will, at their next meeting, accede to the reasonable demands of the local Catholic body, and do what lies in their power to both mend and end a condition of things which perpetuates an injustice, and is a reflection upon the public institutions of the Colony.