THE SECULAR PHASE OF OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8, 25 February 1909, Page 290

THE SECULAR PHASE OF OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM

A DISCUSSION

(By the Editor of the- New Zealand Tablet.) , The following article on the above subject — the seventh of the series — appeared in the Otago Daily Times of February 20: — VII.— SOLUTIONS AND ATTEMPTED SOLUTIONS OF THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY. Difficulties only challenge the wit of the true statesman, as of the .skilled inventor. The religious difficulty in education presents itself in more or less acute forms in countries in which the population is divided up into considerable groups of adherents of different faiths, living in incessant contact. The points to which compromise in this matter may be extended by various creeds will be referred to in another article. Here let it suffice to_ state the general rule laid- down by Lecky in this connection, that -' the object of the legislators should be to satisfy as far as possible the various phases xof national opinion and wishes ' (Democracy and Liberty, new cd., vol. 11., p. 76). There are two broad classes of solutions, or attempted solutions, of the religious difficulty — (1) 'Those that include religion in some or other shape "in the school curriculum, and (2) the so-called ' secular solution,' which banishes religion from its immemorial place in the school lives of the children. (1) Some countries adopt (a) a denominational system only ; (b) some a mixed denominational and secular system ; (c) others provide' for the miscalled ' unsectarian ' religious instruction or exercises within school hours. (2) And, finally, we have the purely secular system, which excludes from the school hours re- - ligious teaching and all moral teaching founded on religion. This system is almost confined to France and its colonies, New Zealand, four of the States of the Australian Commonwealth, and a number of States of the American Union. 1. Although not itself a teacher of religion, the State is deeply concerned in the temporal- advantages arising from the training of children in religion and morality. As this is a discussion between the secular and the religious ideas in education, I propose to bracket together those countries that admit, in any degree, the union of religion with the systems of education which they, in whole of in part, maintain. And, for lack of space, the briefest and most summary descriptions must suffice. ' In no other country in Europe, 1 Sweden possibly excepted, is education so scientific' as in Germany. So writes the Rev. E. F. Williams, D.D. (Protestant), in his Christian Life of Germany (Edinburgh, 1897, p. 40). 'In towns, cities, or villages, where there are twenty-five pupils belonging either to Lutheran, Roman Catholic, or Jewish families,, a separate parish school may be opened, in which the pastor, priest, or rabbi gives a prescribed course of "instruction. These schools, although often established by the churches or the synagogues, are yet under State inspection and control, and receive State aid, though not always enough for their support. That is* the parish school may be treated as a Volksschule, or, if of a certain grade, may be regarded as a pro-gymnasial, or a burgher school ' (op. cit., p. 43; compare Statesmanls Year Book, 1908, pp. 1017-Bj<J.ll6, etc.). And ' the religious lesson is regarded as the most important, and a— religious atmosphere is expected to pervade the school' (Moral Instruction and Training in" Schools : Report of an International Inquiry, 1908, vol. 11., p. 218; see also pp. 213-242). A somewhat similar system prevails in Austria and Hungary.

In Sweden and Norway the elementary and secondary public schools are Lutheran, ' the affairs of both -being finally administered by the Church and the Education.Department,' and ' religion is placed as the first subject on the curriculum' (op. cit., vol. 11., pp. ISO, 182-3, 186). In Denmark law requires dogmatic religious instruction in . all the schools for children, both elementary and secondary.' Holland has a system of ' public "secular and neutral -schools,' together with denominatioijal -schools (Evangelical and Catholic) supported from public funds ' on a system much like that which exists in England, .and which has been very generally accepted ' (Locky, Democracy and Liberty, new cd., vol. 11., p. 72; compare Statesman's Tear Book, 1908, pp. 1270-1). . In Belgium moral instruction and religious observances are ' obligatory . as part ofthe programme of State-aided institutions for primary and secondary education -; teachers may. decline to give such instruction and pupils to attend ; voluntary denominational schools ' are eligible for subsidies from the State, the province, and the municipality or commune, one or more of them. The Church is empowered to ,supei*vise and arrange for or provide religious instruction in the schools. If the communal school teachers do not give it the clergy may,; either by. themselves or their lay nominees ' {Moral Instruction and Training in School. 1908, vol. 11., pp. 119120). - The British system has already been referred to (tor. details see Moral Instruction and Training in Schools, pp. 256-342, 402-464). In Scotland some Catholic schools receive subsidies. The (Presbyterian) Short Catechism forms part" of the curriculum of the Scottish Board Schools. In ' the starved National Schools of Ireland- religion and religious emblems are permitted only in a school hour set apart *theref or. In Newfoundland, and in the provinces of Quebec and Ontario, denominational schools (Catholic and Protestant) are maintained out of the public funds. And' "in every, provincial system an -effort is made to secure the- work of the schools being carried out in a religious spirit' (Lecky, Democracy and Liberty, newed.,vol. 11., p. 67; Moral Instruction and Training in Schools,vol. 11., pp. 282-298). The last remarks hold good for South Africa generally. \ " In the - United btates the. Protestant- Authorised Version of the Bible was long and widely " used as ' a book of "devotion and instruction '- in the public schools. But (as the Biblical World, a Protestant magazine, said in an editorial article in> its issue of -October, -1902) ' Protestant teachers taught^ the Bible^m a way which antagonised the Roman Catholics; and teachers of the. several Protestant denominations interpreted the Bible to the children from their own point of view' (quoted- by Schwickerath, Jesuit Education, p. 585). This (says the Biblical World) led to the Bible being _' generally excluded from the public schools of the United btates.' In many places, however, - the Protestant hymns and forms .of prayer are still .used at the opening 'bf the public scEbols there. In New South Wales and Western Australia, non-Catholic religions instruction or exercise form part of the State curriculum. Aid was given to denominational schools in South Australia (with a break) till the fifties; in Queensland till 1860; in -New South Wales till 1862, and, again (with an interruption) till 1880 ; in Tasmania and Victoria till 1875 ; in New Zealand till the Act of 1877 came into force; and. in Western Australia till 1895. At the present stage I do not propose to comment on the . merits or demerits of the systems of religious instruction or devotion referred tom this article. 2. ' The secular solution,' as its admirers call it, ' solves"' the religious difficulty in education by giving legal force, under "penalties already indicated, to the implied State dogmas " of religion described in the last preceding article. The exclusion of religion and religious training from the schools began in the French Revolution. This policy arose naturally and logically out of the anti-religious philosophy with which Voltaire and Rousseau and their school sought to blot out Christianity. Religious training was revived -in France in a, tentative way after the Concordat in 1801, with State aid in 1816, after Waterloo. The French public school system is at present entirely secular, ' neutral,' and, to a deplorable extent, aggressively atheistic. It is frankly based upon the principles of the Revolution. The rationalist historian Lecky dsscribesit in part in the second volume of his Democracy and. Liberty (new edition). Lecky's hostile feeling towards Catholicism is, by the way', sufficiently manifested by his references to it as ' priestcraft \ and 'superstition' (e.g., pp. 83, 84). The law of 1882 (he says) 'severely excluded, religious teaching from-the public schools ' (p. 78). ' Paul Bert, who represented the most active and proselytising type of atheism, was for some time -Minister of Instruction' (pp. 79-80)"; 'he chiefly organised the new schools,' and even went so far as to carry on a personal propaganda to school children against belief in the existence of God (his words are quoted by Lecky, p. 80). The new

secular law was (says Lccky) 'extremely tyrannical' (pp. 77-8); 'it was a deliberate attempt -on the part of the Government of a country to de-Christianise the nation, . to substitute for religion devotion to a particular form of government, to teach the children of the. poor to despise and repudiate what they learnt in church-! (p. 81). 'The system established in France,' adds Lecky (p. 83), 'was both intolerant and demoralising, . . . and the lamentable increase of juvenile crime in France is probably largely due to the new system of teaching.' To this hour an "open or covert propaganda of dogmatic unbelief "is carried on in the secular and professedly 'neutral' primary schools and departmental training colleges of France, both bjf textbooks and by oral teaching. Summaries of the evidence in point will be found in The Month for December, 1908 (pp. 561-576), and in Moral Instruction and Trailing xn Schools, vol. 11., pp. 51-69 (cf., pp. 70-177). The reader is also referred to the flagrant case which ended in the con- ' damnation of the rabidly atheistic teacher "Morisot, on six counts, by the Court of Appeal of Dijon on December 28, 1908 (London Tablet, January 9, 1909). All this is part and parcel of the general campaign against religion which M.- Viviani, Minister of Labor, avowed, amidst the ' cheers of the Government and its supporters, in the' Chamber of Deputies on November 8, 1906. ' All of us together,' said he in this much-quoted utterance, '"by our fathers, our elders, ourselves, we have devoted ourselves m the past to a work of anti-clericalism, a work of irreligion. • We have torn all religious belief from human consciences, we have extinguished in heaven the lights which it will never re-kindle again. Such has been our work, our revolutionary work, and do you think that this work is finished ? On the contrary, it is beginning, it is boiling up, it is overflowing. How are you going to respond, I ask you, to the child, now grown into manhood, who has learnt from your primary instruction — further completed, too, as it is by the after-school works of the Republic — to contrast his own condition with that of other men ? How are you going t o respond to a man who, thanks to us, is no longer a believer, whom we have deprived of his faith, whom we have told that heaven is void of justice — when he seeks for justice here below?' {Journal Ofliciel, sitting November 8, 1906; compare London Times, December 1, 1906). On November 9 M. Briand, then Minister of Instruction, accepted M. Viviani's ' ideal, 5 ' which/ said he, 'is also ' mine.' Viviani's speech was placarded all over France, by order of Parliament, at the public expense. (See The Month, December, 1908, p. 563; consult also, for this whole subject, Broadhead, The, Religious Persecution in France, 1900-1906, especially pp. 162, 192, and 20ft). As M. Paul Bert utilised his official position as Minister of Instruction for the purpose of propagating atheism among the school children of France, so did M." Briand for tho purpose of disseminating atheism among the teachers. I need here only refer to his extraordinary address to the Congress of the Ligue de l'Enseignement (or Teachers' Association) at Angers, as reported at length in Le Hadical of Axigust 6, 1906. I have dwelt in some detail upon secular public instruction in France, because the system took its rise there, and because it still flourishes there in the full bloom of its original intolerance and dogmatic atheism. ' French principles ' are likewise at the root of the bitter war against religious educatio in the neighboring Low Countries, Holland and Belgium^ Holland is -well described by Leeky _. as 'a country M'here Evangelical Protestantism is perhaps more fervent and more powerful thati in any other part of the Continent ' (Democracy and Liberty, new cd., vol. 11., pp. 70-71). In 1857 a system of 'secular national education' was established there by what was known as the ' revolutionary ' party. ' This system of education,' says Lecky (p. 71), ' was at once branded as theistical. The schools were described as without prayer, without Bible, without faith; every effort was made to prevent devout men from acting as teachers in them or from sending their children to them, and. the stricter clergy absolutely refused to teach religion within their -walls.' ■ The Dutch Protestant majority then did what the~Australian and New_ Zealand Catholic' minority have been doing for a generation. By 1888 they had (says Lecky, p. 72), ' no less than 480 Bible schools supported by .voluntary gifts, with 11,000 teachers and 79,000 pupils. These schools had an annual income of three millions of florins; they 'had a subscribed capital of 16 millions of florins, or about £1,340,000;' and in the battle for religious education 'the Evangelical Protestants were supported by the oa,tholics.' This union of the friends of true education resulted in the granting of State aid to the religious schools. 'Belgium is the close neighbor of France; Belgium as a State came into existence through Revolution ; as a young State Belgium imbibed the French Revolutionary ideal in the matter of civil education; and to-day more than ever, perhaps, great numbers of Belgians look across the near frontier to Jb ranee for political models and inspirations towards change ' (Moral Instruction and Training in

Schools, vol. 11., pp. 120-1). The adherents- of 'French principles were in power from 1878 till 1884. One of their first acts was to drive religion out of the schools. Hi. de Laveleye admits that these politicians were-'anti-iQQ& lOniS m S \ (article in Contemporary Review' for April, ititM). To-day the same anti-religious spirit animates the opponents of religious education (Moral Instruction and framing -in Schools, - pp. 121-2). The party fell from PraYP ra Ye h m With the results sta * ed in a P r^ious parat The introduction of the secular system in New Zealand was hailed in some quarters with immoderate delight as a triumph of secularism over the Christian creeds.' So writes the Rev C. Stuart Ross, D.D. (Presbyterian); in Tqha- 00 xEdwwkon and Educationists in Otago (Dunedin 1890, p. 47). He quotes (pp. 38-40) as ' eloquent and power- * a parliamentary speech in which Dr. Wallis, member tor Auckland City West, denounced secular education as essentially infidel and atheistic' (p. 40). The Rev. Mr Ross's book— and an. important -misquotation thereof by an anonymous writer in the Otago Daily Times— will aeain engage my attention. In another article I propose, with the aid of-official records, to set tonights anonymous misrepresentations of much gravity and of wide range in regard to the part played by Catholics in the secularising of education m New Zealand. Meantime, let me state once more: I am far from assuming .that any conscious hostility to religion motived the secularising of the school system in ToT 1 . Among its supporters are many earnest and God-fearing people^' But I still fail to understand the precise way in which a system that was all alone intended for the destruction of religion. in Continental Europe is to protect or promote religion in New. Zealand.