BEFORE THE EDUCATION COMMITTEE

New Zealand Tablet, 22 October 1914, Page 31

BEFORE THE EDUCATION COMMITTEE

THE TEACHERS’ CONSCIENCE. CLAUSE.

{ In giving evidence on behalf of the teacher's in regard to the Religious Instruction in Schools Referendum Bill, Mr, J. Uaughley, M.A., asked to be allowed to put before the committee a special resolution of the New Zealand Educational Institute. The religious nature (he said) of the proposed Scripture lessons is past argument, . In 58 places in the League's publications the teachers’ lesson is referred to as Religious Instruction. The exclusion of sectarian teaching makes it more religious rather than less. The religious nature of the lessons is . admitted by the conscience clause for parents. All claims for the introduction of the Word of ' God into the regular school curriculum would” be nullified if the lessons were not religious lessons. Yet the League refuses to consider the granting of a conscience clause to teachers. Now most, emphatically we deny the authority of ' the League to determine this question. We deny the preposterous claim of the League to- say that if the question is submitted to a vote, the League will exclude from the ballot paper the question of the teachers’ conscience. We most emphatically deny that the teachers’ conscience is of less concern than the parents’. The teacher would actually have to give the lessons, while the parent would only have to ,permit them. We, the teachers of New Zealand, confidently appeal to Parliament, the protector of our liberties both as citizens, and as public servants, to declare that there shall be no teaching in State schools which would, by compulsion, impose on a public servant a religious lesson of a kind, or under conditions, that would be an offence to his religious beliefs. We state most solemnly that it would not be an agnostic teacher whose conscience would be most offended by this teaching. It would be many of our finest men and women whoso religious convictions are the deepest. There is scarcely a ; man or woman in the Dominion who would not emphatically endorse the Vindication of our rights of conscience by Parliament,' the only tribunal to which we can look for justice. We appeal unto Caesar. There have been put forward for teachers several objections of a minor nature. They cannot fairly be regarded as the ground of the widespread and deeply-rooted objection of the teaching, profession to the League’s scheme. The number of subjects on the syllabus, the 'appointment of teachers, and the like all have some relation to the question, but the fundamental objections are that the scheme is inherently weak, formal, stale, flat, and dead. That it is not only almost farcical, in the methods of teaching-proposed, but it is a serious and dangerous travesty of religion such as is denounced by Inspector Holmes ; that it lulls the public conscience into the belief that the religious training is being, attended to • and causes a slackening of really effective means of religious teaching, that the use of the Bible as a secular book, would defeat the purpose for which the League demands its introduction that the glaring injustice of the, scheme, as disclosed even by the League’s manifesto, condemns it forever as an instrument'for moral and religious influence in the alleged interests of the Bible, whose universal demand is that ! Ave shall not only be just but more than just ; that- the compulsion of teachers to teach the Scriptures ,is in violent opposition to the whole Spirit of the Scriptures themselves'; that the. Bible from end to end places on the parent and those specially called to teach the Scriptures, and on them alone, the duty and privilege of the religious training of the children ; that the whole spirit ; of the Bible is in opposition to the delegation of his duty, far the less the compulsion of anyone to spread the knowledge of the Word of " God ; that' no selfconstituted body has the right to set up a new legislative procedure, not legally constitutional, and to tic the hands of half the electors by a form of ballot paper framed confessedly in'the interests* of one denomination, which seeks to secure enfranchisement, at the cost of the disenfranchisement of others; that if our educational system requires radical alteration, this shall be 'done c by ;‘a‘ body- that - will .go, fully . into all the resulting

issues that are involved, instead of passively allowing a proposal which fairly bristles with educational problems of vital importance, with - constitutional questions of a revolutionary character, with questions .ofcreligious and civil liberty that have not hitherto been * settled or. even raised in New Zealand, passively allowing all this to be thrown into a plebiscite in which; these questions will not even be realised, and in which the irresponsible individual voter will be actuated mostly by his sectarial leanings,- and appealed to purely on the ; ' question of the Bible. -'As if there were no other means on . earth by which the Bible could be taught than as a piece of secular literature by teachers who are forced to do it but 'are treated as- if they of. all the people in. New Zealand had no conscience. That, finally, we hold that there are ample existing means for the religious training -of the children by . agencies acting under the free spiritual, voluntary conditions which alone should be employed. As a Sunday school teacher of twenty years’ experience I have no hesitation in declaring that one hour of Sunday school teaching by a devoted Christian teacher, even if he is an amateur, is worth twenty hours of the officialised, restricted, formal, compulsory instruction demanded by this Bill, that if the Churches put half the organisation, time, money, and men into these agencies already at their command, they would reach far more children than they could, under the League scheme. They would not .be making religion a matter of politics, with that compromise which is the death of morality and religion, even if it is the soul of politics. They would not have to make the Bible a cover for injustice, and our children would receive religious training in the only atmosphere that is consistent with religion. In this work large numbers of day school teachers who are repelled by the League’s scheme, would gladly take an active share. In fact it is safe to say that in no class in the community is there in proportion a larger number of~Sunday school teachers or Christian workers, than in the teaching profession. Though we thus help in the spiritual training of the children under proper auspices, we can never approve in or consent to be compelled to take part in the League’s unscriptural, and in the light of their gross injustice its utterly un-Christian proposals.