THE EDUCATION COMMISSION

New Zealand Tablet, 13 June 1912, Page 23

THE EDUCATION COMMISSION

HIS LORDSHIP BISHOP CLEARY GIVES EVIDENCE

The following is a full report of the evidence given by the Right Rev. Henry W. Cleary, Bishop of Auckland, at last Thursday's sitting of the Education Commission in Auckland :—•

' I am here to-day because I know that your Commission is willing to receive any criticism or suggestion that is likely to be helpful in improving our school system. ' I fully recognise how generally meritorious that system is in its methods of instruction, and how fortunate in its personnel. My criticism of it gets back to what, in common with many others, I regard as its fundamental defect. I think I may fairly be taken as representing in this connection, the views of a large section of the people of this Dominion, and, among them, of many who are skilled in the principles and methods of education. ' But first, I desire to point out two surface anomalies in the. system, in so far.as it affects non-State secondary schools. (1) Maori children are allowed to take out scholarships in private secondary schools, under Government inspection. This reasonable and proper right has not yet been generally extended to the children of white parents". (2) Section 67 (2) of the amended Education Act of 1908 reads as follows m regard to Board and Private Scholarships: "The holder of any such scholarship shall receive the amount of his scholarship only so long as he prosecutes his studies, to the satisfaction of the Board, at a secondary school or its equivalent approved by the Board." I am advised that the equivalent" school, here referred to, may be interpreted to mean any secondary school, public or private, of an educational standing approved for this purpose by the Board. I am, furthermore, informed that this subsection of the Act is, in practice so interpreted in the case of two large private secondary schools m this Dominion—one at Wanganui, the other at Christchurch. Thus far, we have been unable to secure the application of this interpretation, under any

conditions, to any one of the many excellent secondary schools conducted by Catholics in New Zealand. However, if the term "equivalent," in this connection, should be deemed to be ambiguous, or if it should not fairly bear the meaning alleged to be attached to it in two particular cases, I suggest that this and the corresponding sections of the Act should be amended as to make scholarships available, as a matter of course and right, at all secondary schools that, are open to Government inspection and, educationally, up to the Government programme. This remark. also applies, mutatis mutandis, to free places. The suggested amendment of the Act would bring New Zealand into line with New South Wales, Victoria, and Queensland, where both the Government schools and the private schools have mutually benefited by a healthy and generous competition. 'I now refer more particularly to primary schools. It is a sound principle of statecraft that taxes which are levied from all should, in some shape or other, be used for the benefit of all. In the matter of public instruction, we in New Zealand do not follow that golden rule. Our Catholic schools and many other religious schools long formed a part of the State system. We did not withdraw from that system. We were excluded from it by Act of Parliament in 1877. To many of the legislators of the time that measure was a wellintentioned effort to secure what is an absolute impossibility in any system of education— neutrality m regard to religious faith. Now, I wish to direct the particular attention of the Commission to the most serious and radical defect in the public school system. The religious schools were not alone excluded by Act of Parliament from their previous standing as public schools; but they were excluded on what is, in effect a dogmatic religious test. This test is supplied by sundry views of religion— sundry religious dogmas—which constitute the foundation of the secular phase of our Education Act, I will here mention only two or these underlying dogmas. The first is this:. That religion has no necessary or useful place in schooltraining. The second dogma is this: That a political majority has the moral right to exclude religion from the placewhach it has occupied from immemorial ages in education. Take away these dogmas, and you sweep aside the foundation on which the secular phase of our Education Act is based. I will not take up the time or the Commission by pointing out certain other dogmatic views of religion which are also implied in our secular schools system. But we have here what is tantamount to a State creed—a creed of not many articles, but a creed which, within its limits, is as dogmatic as the Agnostic creed or the Nicene creed or the Westminster Confession of Faith. ~f 5 OXr Education Act has, in the schools, established these dogmatic views of religion and endowed them at the common expense of all It has extended no such privilege to the many who cannot in conscience accept these dogmas. In view of the compulsory clauses of the Act, and in the absence, over wide areas, of an alternative system, the only alternatives for dissidents are the following: They must either do violence to their conscientious convictions, or they must pay for the educational system which their conforT dei ? ands % an 1 d ** - tlie same time pay in taxation for the system which their conscience rejects. Here we have, m practical working, what I have already de-cnbed-a system that, in effect, allots educational glo\lTst° n IS ' fundamenta %> a dogmatic relTJ t ' We respect , the motive of those legislators who cotJS i° eS r bish a - COUrSe ° f public Auction ™- colored by religious views-so far as that motive mav have been dictated by respect for the religious susce^S faileTto e ?t^r S i EUt . the »-* W obvTously tailed to establish a system objectively neutral in all that concerns religion. In fact, objective neutrality in this connection, is as much an impossibUitv l\ X square circle. This impossibility (as T\av e shown in recent publications) arises out of the very natiTre of he case; it is evidenced by the declarations o man leading educationists, and by the franlr «!?«.• •« I the .tandard.w'of tk/ P g

the country in which it took its rise. So true it is that if you throw one set of dogmas regarding religion out by the school door, another set will immediately come in by the window.

' On the part of a large section of taxpayers, I would press upon this Commission the need of according the same general educational treatment to the consciences that cannot, as to the consciences that can, accept those views of religion upon which our Education Act is based. A very considerable body of people in this Dominion hold the following views of the place of religion in education : They hold to the old and more generally accepted doctrine that religion is an essential part of all education properly so called. They believe that education is a vital and continuous processproceeding on essentially ; uniform principles both in the home and in the school, which is merely an extension of the home. They believe that it is a grave educational error to expose the child to opposite educational influences in the school and in the well-regulated home —as, for instance, by treating his moral and intellectual faculties as if they were so many watertight compartments. They hold that the State is not above or beyond the reach of the moral law ; that it has not a radically different aim from that of the individual; and that the child's high capacity for religious and moral growth is, when duly developed, of enormous value as a national asset. It therefore seems to us that, even, from the patriotic viewpoint, it would be a calamity for any school system to leave, by however indirect a manner, upon the mind of the child the. idea that religion is a matter only for the home and the church, or that it is a matter of secondary importance to arithmetic as a preparation for life, or that sufficient codes of personal conduct can be formed apart from the inspiration and the sustaining power of religion. ' I do not ask the members of this Commission to share these views of religion in education. I merely ask them to recognise the fact that these views are widely held. For us, Catholics, these teachings are as the very marrow of our lives. The case between the State school and the unaided private school is, in its last resort, a case of dogma against dogma. The fairest and most statesmanlike way is for the State to recognise, in a proper and practical way, that there are other views of religion in education * besides those for which our present Act provides. We ask only for equal treatment of conscience in education. I know that this would present certain difficulties but the difficulties are superficial. New Zealand statesmanship has met and conquered greater ; and Canada, Germany, Belgium, Scandinavia, and maay other lands show that, given good-will, we also may arrive at a just settlement of this radical defect in our education system.'