The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, AUGUST 10, 1911. A MAGISTRATE ON EDUCATION

New Zealand Tablet, 10 August 1911, Page 1525

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, AUGUST 10, 1911. A MAGISTRATE ON EDUCATION

® print elsewhere in this issue an exceedXE print interesting and carefully-thought-ingly interesting and carefully-thought - wlfn out address on Education by Mr. S. E. M 4 McCarthy, S.M., at present stationed in Hawke’s Bay. Mr. McCarthy is not a Catholic J and so far as he is known to us at all is known chiefly for the, reputation which he has acquired for being, in his judicial capacity, ‘ a terror, to evil-doers ’ —as the Biblical phrase has itand, in particular, to evil-doers of the ‘ sly-grog ’ variety. Mr. McCarthy approaches, the question, therefore, without any personal religious bias towards the Catholic view.. He discusses it simply .from the stand-point of the earnest Christian layman; and with the clearness, acumen, and logicalness of the trained reasoner. It is interesting and significant to note that on the great leading principles which lie at the root of what we call the Education s Question, Mr. McCarthy is in com-! plete agreement with the Catholic attitude ; and, so far as its statement of principles is concerned, the address might almost have been indited by Dr. Cleary himself. * To begin with, Mr. McCarthy '"accepts entirely the Catholic definition of Education— is, indeed, the definition which every Christian must give. * Man,’ ’ he says, is a composite animal. He has a three-sided nature, consisting of body or matter, mind, and spirit. . . • Any system of education, then, worthy of the name, should not ignore any one of this trinity of qualities. If it does, the result will be a lopsided and not a fully rounded character, . . . .What I am contending for is that the body, the mind, and the soul, being all God-given, the contemporaneous development of each essential part is a duty resting on all who take up education as their life’s work.’ What is this but an endorsement, almost in express terms, of the definition laid down by the Catholic Bishops of New Zealand in their manifesto of 1904. ‘A sound education,’ they write, ‘ consists essentially in the harmonious development of the physical, the intellectual, and the moral faculties of children. For this purpose, secular and religious instruction must ever go hand in hand, forming the minds of children to useful know- . ledge and their hearts and wills to the civil, social, and domestic virtues, so that each shall contribute* the unit of his goodness to form the sum of righteousness that exalteth a nation.” . . . Any system of education is, therefore, defective which relegates the religious and moral training of children to a secondary or unimportant place.’ And what is Mr. McCarthy’s definition but a variant of the words used by Dr. Cleary—and he has employed similar expressions on many different occasions—in his Secular versus lie. It gums Education : ‘ The child is heir to heaven All his faculties—physical, intellectual, moral, religious—-

were given to him as means to that end. These faculties are to be developed harmoniously-—not with the lopsided development of the Spartan or the Athenian, but unto the full perfection of Christian manhood and womanhood.' ' V.' : ' ■ './' * Mr. McCarthy is also in full accord with Catholic teaching in"emphasising the fact that education is essentially a parent's question. 'The right upbringing of a child,' he says, 'is so sacred a function and it is so closely bound up with its future career that we, at once and by instinct, apart from all reasoning arrive at the conclusion that this primary duty rests on the parent. The State, indeed, both in England and in this Dominion, has recognised this. For we find that it is the parent who is held responsible for the nonattendance at school of his truant child. ... The State, then, in providing a system of primary education stands in the place of the parent. To put the matter in another form the whole question of primary education is, in the last analysis, a parent's question.' That is precisely the point which was stressed by the Catholic Bishops of New Zealand in a second pronouncement on the Education Question published by them shortly after the issue of the manifesto above referred to. ' The relation of parent to child,' they say, 'is earlier than that of the State to the citizen. And the duty of the physical, intellectual, moral, and religious growth and development of the child falls primarily and by right upon those who were the immediate cause of its existence —namely, upon its parents. This is a dictate of the Natural Law, of which God is the Author. It is, moreover, to parents, and not to the Civil Power or to the School Boards, that God's positive command was also given to train up their children to fulfil all that is written in the Law."' (Deuter. xxii, 46.) And this, again,, is but an echo of the declaration of the English Catholic Hierarchy in 1894: Creator, wherever such natural right has not been forfeited, to secure and watch over the education of their children in that which they believe to be the true religion. No plea on behalf of educational uniformity, and no decision by any majority of votes, can alter or abrogate this fundamental natural law, which the Legislature and the people of this country are equally bound to, respect and observe.'

The practical corollary,, also, which Mr. McCarthy draws from the foregoing fundamental principles—viz., that the State is fairly and logically- bound to respect the wishes of parents in regard to the religious training of their offspring in full harmony with the Catholic position. ' If the State,' he says, ' takes up the whole of the children's educational hours it should not forget that they have spiritual as well as physical and mental natures, and if it cannot itself undertake the work of religious education it should not prevent others from so doing. Indeed, the State having superseded the parent in educational matters, cannot, on principle. ignore the wishes of the parent with regard to the religious training of their offspring. To put the matter more plainly, the State for good and sufficient reasons has assumed control of education and thus has taken the place, of the parent. But, between parent and child there are ties as enduring as they are tender. If, then, the parents for good and sufficient reasons, wish the opportunity to cultivate the religious faculties of their children as part of the ordinary scheme of education, surely no one has a better right to make the demand.' That is, in a nutshell, the very position for which Catholics have been fighting for the last thirty-four years. * Mr. McCarthy's address is, in terms, a plea for the adoption of the, New South Wales system; but the principles laid down—carried honestly to their logical conclusion—lead plainly and directly to a recognition of the justice of Catholic claims. Mr. McCarthy hesitates to go quite this length, on the following ground: Whilst one can concede nothing but praise to our Roman Catholic brethren for their sacrifices in the

cause of education, the objection to the first-named (Catholic) system is' that if it were applied to the numerous bodies lying outside of that communion the energies of ; those controlling education would be dissipated, whilst the secular training would lack cohesion and the advantages resulting from concentrated effort.' The answer to that is that nobody suggests that .the Catholic system should be 'applied to the numerous bodies lying outside of that communion.' The nonCatholic bodies themselves neither suggest nor desire it—being, with scarcely an exception, avowedly content either with some mere Bible-reading arrangement or with the ' New South- Wales system. If some country could be pointed out. in which the break-up or impairment of a national system had resulted from the handing over to Catholic schools of an equivalent of the taxes contributed by Catholics to public education, the well-worn contention advanced by , Mr. McCarthy might, perhaps, be entitled to some small measure of respect. In. Germany, Sweden, Norway, Holland, Belgium, England, Newfoundland, and in the provinces of Quebec and .Ontario, denominational schools are maintained, wholly or in part, out of the public funds; and most of the countries named are recognised as being in the very forefront in the matter of up-to-date and efficient education. ■ - * ' ■•'. - ' - •■'."

Our desire, however, is to emphasise, not the point of difference, but the points of fundamental agreement between Mr. McCarthy’s thoughtful and able treatment of this great question and the attitude of the Catholic Church, He has only one answer that an emphatic one—to the question, ‘ God or no-God in the School’? He agrees with us that education'is not education unless it gives religion its due place; he agrees that the rights of the parents in regard to the religious training of their children are absolute and paramount; and he agrees that if ‘ a way can be found for imparting definite religious instruction without impairing the secular training/ the State is bound, on principle, not to ignore the parents’ wishes. The question has been raised in Catholic circles, both in England and in New Zealand, as to whether a friendly discussion or round table conference with representative non-Catholic leaders might not be useful in promoting a better understanding and in bringing about such an arrangement as would be beneficial to all the friends of religious education in the country. Certain it is that if any considerable number of our non-Catholic triends were to bring to the consideration of the question the breadth of view and correct perspective which have marked Mr. McCarthy’s utterance such a discussion could not be otherwise than productive of good.