EDUCATION SYSTEM

New Zealand Tablet, 30 March 1911, Page 567

EDUCATION SYSTEM

CATHOLICS' POSITION. The following letter from the Right Rev. Dr. Cleary, Bishop of Auckland, appeared in the Wellington Evening Post of March 22 : Sir, —The sole questions at issue between us are the following: 1. The principles of life-philosophy that lie at the root of the secular school system—that is, the views of life, the ideals of life, the educational principles which it involves and implies. 2. On what groundwork principles —on what view of life,its origin, duties, and destiny, on what fundamental educational principledo believers in the Christian revelation support the exclusion of God and religion from the school-training of children? Through your persistent refusal to face either of these two fundamental issues, I have been compelled order to keep this discussion from falling through— do your work of setting before your readers the principles that are involved in the secular" system. And you have no reasonable ground of complaint if, in doing your work as well as my own, I have occupied more of your space than suited my own tastes or interests. Your method of discussion compels me at once to repeat the universally accepted rootmaxim of the question: that education is a preparation for life and its duties. Herbert Spencer, who was no Christian, defines education as a preparation for 'complete living.' Now Christianity teaches that no living is ' complete' which leaves out of consideration the ultimate purpose and destiny of life, and which, so far as it may, thwarts that purpose and sets it aside. In accepting the secular system, you thereby accept all that it properly involves. But on what Christian principle do you accept a system which is, so apparently, in opposition with Christian teaching?

The burden of justification of the system falls upon you. You have declined to follow the one possible course of such justificationan appeal to the two fundamental issues set forth above. You have not been able to state so much as one solitary principle underlying the system, which a believing Christian could accept. There is no intricate question of theology, much less of metaphysics, involved in this discussion. It requires only a ‘ plain man’s ’ elementary knowledge of Christian faith, some acquaintance with our Education Act, with the history of Christian education, and with the principles of right inference or deduction. But you have let the whole case for the secular school go by default; and this, not from any lack of ability, but simply because, from the Christian view-point, the system has not an argumentative leg to stand upon. This discussion has, therefore, amply achieved the purpose which I had in view in entering upon it. I do not want, at the present time, to complicate this discussion by dealing _ w'it’rf the atheistic point of view, which is not at present in issue, and which requires starting with principles that lie much farther back. It will receive attention when such attention is made necessary or desirable.

Here I might ‘ pause for a reply.’ _ But, from the first, you have, unfortunately, been clouding the clear fundamental issues with a dust-storm of fallacies or erroneous contentions. Your doing so entitles me to as much space as may be necessary to expose them. Here is a first instalment:

1. One of the dogmas of our sectarian secular system is this: that religion has no necessary or rightful place in the school-training of children. This also happens to be one of the dogmas of the various schools of atheism. You likewise assume the truth of this State-school dogma. But it is your duty to prove it, not to assume it. Moreover it is necessary for you to prove it by an appeal to life-principles and life-ideals which believing Christians can accept. Here is a ‘ riddle of the universe ’ for you to read.

2. You say that the State has no right to teach religion. Granted. But (a) on what Christian principle, precisely, does it follow that the State must, therefore, create a monopoly of free public instruction, and place a ban upon religion in the schools? (b) On what Christian principle does it likewise follow that the high capacity of the child for religious and moral development in the school must be neglected as of no practical use or value or interest as a national asset? (c) On what Christian principle does it furthermore, follow that it would be immoral for the State to empower those who are competent and willing as ; n Germany, Belgium, England, Canada, and so many do IU vAt/A ulu, *v ) ~ 1 r other countries—to make religion what it has been from time immemorial— very soul of education? And (d) has it not been amply demonstrated that our State has set up as a teacher of religion—of a sort; that it has taken the atheist side in a controversy forced upon religion by atheism- and that it has, moreover, devised and endowed a bundle of implied State dogmas for use in our public schools? ,

3 Here is another dogma of the State-school religion: The State has the moral right to exclude God and religion,

under civil penalties, from the school. Our atheist friends assume the truth of this doctrine. So do you. But it is your duty to prove its truth, not to assume it. On what Christian principles do you set about this? Christians believe, with St. Raul, that ‘ there is no power but of God, and the powers that be are ordered of God (Rom,, xiii., 1). Where, precisely, did God authorise the civil power to banish Him, and faith and hope in Him, and love of Him, from His ‘ little ones ’ in the school ? And if the civil power has (as you maintain) the moral right to banish religion from the school, why may it not also, if it so choose, drive it out of the home and out of every phase of public and private life

4. Religious people differ as to the amount and kind of religion to be imparted in the schools therefore (you contend) the only ‘ solution ’ of the difficulty is to wipe religion completely out of the schools, (a) On what particular Christian principle do you justify this fantastic plea? (b) Here, once again, you are assuming, without an atom of proof, that the State has a moral right to banish religion from the school, (c) In a speech at Liverpool on April 5, 1872, Lord Salisbury described this ‘ solution ’ as £ the most grotesque form of tyranny. It is,’ added he, ‘just as bad as if a starving man were to apply to two gentlemen for relief, and they, quarrelling whether they should give him beef or mutton, decided not to give him anything at all.’ Every educationist is aware of the conflicting views of experts on the teaching of arithmetic. Do you suggest that the only practical ‘ solution ’ of the difficulty is the suppression of the teaching of arithmetic, under legal penalties, in the schools? Or do you hold that the true ‘ solution ’ of the controversy on freehold v. leasehold, is to abolish all forms of land tenure? And, finally, (c) are not politicians and journalists, with their endless and stormy dissensions, about the last people on this planet that should take up a parable against the divergent views of the friends of religious education?

5. An appeal, by you, to the underlying principles of the secular system would have furnished, out of your own mouth, an effective condemnation of that system. You w isely declined such an appeal. Now', instead, you ‘ fortify ’ yourself by an appeal to the ‘ authority ’ of Gladstone and two others, (a) But it is here a question, not of human ‘ authorities,’ but of principles, ideals, lifeviews'. Does the authority of John Doe or Richard Roe, of Mr. This or Madam That, alter by one pin-point the underlying principles of our secular system? (b) But if authority were to decide this question, as between Christian disputants, have I not at my back the authority of Christ Himself, the Teacher of the ‘ little ones ’; the authority of the great and good in every age of Christian history; nay, even of unbelievers such as Lecky, John Stuart Mill, and scores of others whom I might name? Do these legions of authorities count as nothing against your trio ? (c) In quoting them, you forget that, in England, the terms ‘ secular solution ’ and ‘ secular system ’ are, generally, loosely and improperly applied to a scheme of public instruction which includes, as part of the curriculum, a very appreciable amount of religion, including the reading of the Bible as a Sacred Book. (Sec, for instance, Morley’s Life of Gladstone, vol. i., pp. 932-946; the various pronouncements of Mr. Runciman, Minister of Education, on the secular ‘ solution ’; the Report of the Fourteenth Annual Conference of the National Council of the Evangelical Free Churches, held at Swansea on March 9,1909; etc.). I am unable to test the accuracy of your quotations from Dr. Parker and Archbishop Temple, as you have given no references whatever. But you misrepresent Gladstone when you convey the clear inference that he described a secular system, such as ours, as being ‘ impartial and not, if fairly worked, in any degree unfriendly to religion.’ Mr. Gladstone was not advocating a penal law banishing religion from the school. You can readily see, by reference to Morley’s work, as abovej that the so-called ‘secular systems ’ in Gladstone’s mind were really religious systems. The opinion which you misquote is given on p. 945 of the same work and volume, and is taken from a letter written by the great Liberal statesman to Bright on January 27, 1874; The fact is it seems to me, that the Noncons. have not yet as a body made up their minds whether they want unSectarian religion, or whether they want simple secular teaching, SO FAR AS THE APPLICATION OF THE RATE IS CONCERNED. I have never been strong against the latter of these two which seems to me to be impartial, and not, if fairly worked, of necessity in any degree unfriendly to religion.’ Gladstone did not propose to banish religion from the schools by penal enactment, but to limit the application of public moneys to secular teaching. Cardinal Manning urged this strongly on Gladstone (p. 942). And this is precisely what Catholics have long been demanding here —not a grant for religious instruction, but simply and solely for the ‘ secular teaching’ imparted in their schools.

You do me a grave wrong when you suggest that I label as ‘ atheists Gladstone and your other two ‘authorities,’ and the Christian supporters of the secular system in New' Zealand. I have, over and over again, ip express terms, repudiated any such idea. As recently as my last letter I stated my conviction that numbers of well-mean ini’Christian people are misled into support of the secular system because they do not realise what it implies and whither it is drifting, as it has drifted in France. But

in terms as express, I have called, and called in vain, upon you to get to the root of the matter, and explain on what Christian principle Christian people toss up their caps and huzza for a school system which was devised by French atheists for the destruction of religious faith in the rising generation. Finally, I am not now dealing with the merits- or demerits of particular solutions or attempted solutions of the religious difficulty in education. Before getting to this question, we must settle the fundamental —religion or irreligion (there is no practical middle term) in the school. • —Yours, etc., * HENRY W. CLEARY, D.D., Bishop of Auckland. March 18, 1911.