The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, JANUARY 13, 1921. A CRY FROM THE DEPTHS

New Zealand Tablet, 13 January 1921, Page 25

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, JANUARY 13, 1921. A CRY FROM THE DEPTHS

F we except the sort of people who are called ir statesmen we may safely say that all men ? know that instruction and education are )| very different things. Many years ago, w* Lacordaire uttered these - memorable words: “Woe to the empire that no longer knows how to bring up its children. Woe to the empire that confounds instruction with education, believing that science and literature are the roots of goodness and that an arrangement of words for study can prepare the soul of a MAN.” France has found out that Lacordaire was right. Every civilised country knows it to-day. Leading educationists in every part of the world bear witness to the truth of the thesis that instruction is not education, and that true education must have a higher aim than the mere imparting of information. The false ideas begotten of the theories of men like Comenius, Rousseau, Froebel, and Herbart are at the base of systems like that adopted by the politicians of New Zealand for the ruin of the people: systems that lack discipline and restraint and have no power to form characters strong enough and inspire ideals noble, enough for the uplifting of people. It is hardly too' much to say that the War, with its aftermath of misery and sorrow, was the result of trying to educate children as. if they were animals that had no souls and no higher end than the dust from which they sprang and to which they will return it is certainly not too much to say that until we begin building a new order on a basis of Christian education, individuals, families, nations, will never rise above the greed and the lust and the hate from which all wars come. If one thing is needed at present amid the ruins of the world that thing is true education which will bring Christ back again into the schools and the homes from which our atheists have expelled Him. ; : . ’ * . Some time ago the New England Journal of Education asked if Catholics were wrong in making such great sacrifices for the sake of their schools, and said: “The. answer is: Catholics are not wrong in teaching religion in their schools if a man be worth more than a dog. . . The human soul with eternity before it is of more value than the. -span -of* animal’'existence to-day.” . The ‘ writer then foretells what is. going to

happen if Protestants do not arouse themselves - and imitate Catholics: “We are no prophets, but it does seem to us that Catholics, retaining their religious teachings and we our heathen schools, will gaze upon cathedral crosses all over New England, when our meeting houses will be turned into barns. Let them go on teaching their religion to the children in schools and let us go on educating our children without a recognition of God and without reading the, Bible, and they will plant corn and train grapevines on the unknown graves of the Plymouth Pilgrims and of the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay, and none will dispute their right of possession. We say this without expressing our own fears and hopes, but as inevitable from the fact that whatever a man soweth that shall he also reap.” Experts testify that in France anarchy and immorality are the fruits of driving God from the schools; Lecky is a witness to the fact that undenominational schools undermine religion; the strongest supporters of the secular system are precisely the people who aim openly at establishing universal unbelief and overthrowing faith in the supernatural. Consequently, no sincere Christian, no man who knows that religion is the- only basis for sound morals and the only bulwark against the destruction that threatens the Home and the State, can conscientiously support secular schools. Moreover, apart altogether from the results of rival systems, it is axiomatic with authorities that any State that endeavors to impose uniformity and to exclude the teaching of the doctrines of any particular Church in favor of denominational teaching is acting unjustly and foolishly. ' * Having said so much regarding general principles let us once more look at the situation in New Zealand. Here we have a Government that tries to enforce on all a sectarian system —for note well that a system that specially favors atheists, as ours does, is sectarian. We have a Government that robs us and refuses to give us back a penny of our own money for the education of our own children. We have Minister's of Education so devoid of principle that they are ready to aid the bigots aqd the atheists in every effort to injure the schools which we maintain at great sacrifices and with remarkable success. So striking is the success of our pupils that we now have the State school teachers complaining because children are passing by their doors and going where they get better instruction and real education. Only the other day there arose from the Teachers’ Executive a despairing prayer to the Government to save them by penalising the private schools with which they are unable to compete in spite of all that has been done for. State schools and all that has been done against our schools. They want a monopoly to keep them in their jobs: their howl is a testimony that they are inefficient and that only Government aid can save them. They are exactly like a collection of cab-drivers calling for the suppression of motors and taxis with which they cannot compete, or like any protected concern that is not strong enough or good enough to stand on its own merits and win its way in fair competition. It was, only a few years ago.that the Christian Brothers’ boys in Dunedin gave all the local State schools such a whipping in athletics that the unmanly State teachers combined in an effort to boycott the Catholic boys; and what they did then where sport was concerned they are combining through the '.Dominion to do now with regard to teaching. What an arrant confession of failure it is! What a monumental testimony to the excellence of our own schools! What a warning and an example of the sort of currish spirit such State schools and such teachers are likely to infuse into the children! If justice, religion, even pagan principles, were likely to guide our. politicians they would certainly deal severely with their servants who try to dictate to them but not even pagan principles, not even elementary consideration for right and wrong, have any influence on the Government' which was put in power by the followers of a (horsewhipped calumniator of dead women - ; and the sole hope of reform and of justice lies in stirring up in every man and 1 woman to whom religion is dear a

vivid apprehension of the ruin which is hastening upon the Dominion as a result of godless schools, godless politicians, and the persecution of communities and individuals who speak from their hearts when they say every day: I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth, and of all things, visible and invisible; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, Our Lord. ■ *