THURSDAY, MAY 7, 1908. SCHOOL COMMITTEES

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 18, 7 May 1908, Page 21

THURSDAY, MAY 7, 1908. SCHOOL COMMITTEES

fN Jus 'Love a la Mode', Macklin descriibfcs--the law as ' a sort of hocus-pocus science \ 1 The glorious uncertainty ' of it fogged fais fancy ; but even that uncertainty lifts' ■ attimes and enables those wha Jive under the law to see clearly the legal ground on which - they stand. Till last Monday we in New".. "I II Ii ) Zealand were, for instance, ' all in a fog ' . as to the relative powers of Education Boards and School Committees in regard to the control' of the working hours of our public schools. Last Moowlay's Appeal Court judgment (in the case o£ Bruce and; others • v., the Wanganui Education Board) has served to lift the . fog. And now we see clearly how far School Committees shall go 1 , and no further, in the matter over" which a legal controversy has been -so long, wagging its tongue.

A Press Association telegram in last Tuesday's ' daily papers runs in part as follows;—- ' Mr. Justice Williams, In. ' delivering his judgment stated that the case depended upon section 124 of the Education Act, 1904.' That section gave "the ' Education Board the controlling . power,, and made it ~ paramount, -It was necessary for the • conformity of education that in such an important matter as the fixing of school'^ hours the Board, and not the school committee, should have control. His Honor agreed with the conclusion" of Mr. Justice Cooper in the' court below, and held that the .appeal should be dismissed. All the member®" of the Court concurred 1 , and "the appeal was dismissed, with cosl>s on the middle ..scale and as from a distance.' The. decision covers issues of much wider import than' that of merely fixing school hours. For the case

was brought forward to tesl the power of the Committee to set aside, in effect, the secular clauses of the Education Act, and, by a judicious ' rigging ' of the warkuiDg hours, make sectarian instruction "practically part aond parcel of the public school curriculum. Last Monday's judgment debars the' School Committees from so doing. The decision is good, so far as it goes. But it does not remove one of the chief objects in running School Committee elections on sectarian lines ; neither does it give full assurance of security to dissenters from a State school creed. For the School Committees elect the Education Boards, and it is still within the power of a well-organised minority, working quietly or in the dark, so to conduct the Committee elections over a School Board area, that they might be able to dominate within its limits the administration of the Education Act. A determined effort in that direct/ion was .made in and about Wellington at the recent Committee elections, the Bible-in-schools League interviewIng and putting forward candidates, and pledging support only to such as would support the reading of the Protestant version oE the Scriptures in the public schools. That effort was solidly defeated. We set very little practical value upon a beggarly half-hour's scriptural instruction in a week, in an atmosphere that is unreal, unreligious, and unsuited to produce the best results from such teaching. But it has at least the negative advantage of being better than nothing. We have the profoundest sympathy for every effort of our separated brethren to give biblical and religious instruction to ffhe children of their various faiths outs'Me the working hours of the public schools. But we think that" more attention should be directed to the efforts that are being made — and successfully made in various places — to introduce sectarian instruction into the primary public schools, and even (as we happen to know) to make some of our high schools a medium for dissemanat'ing, through alleged manuals of ' history ' and otherwise,- an extremely objectionable form of antiCatholic fable and bias and misconception.