The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, JULY 19, 1923. TRUE EDUCATION

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 28, 19 July 1923, Page 29

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, JULY 19, 1923. TRUE EDUCATION

his book for the children of France, Rene Bazin tells us a little story which is almost a shock to the mind of the reader. Two children strayed into the Louvre Palace one day and wandered round the rooms, looking at the wonderful objects of art collected there. In a glass case was a beautiful ivory crucifix, and the children paused before it. "What is that?" said one of them. "Who is He? What did He do?" In Catholic France this was possible. Children . old enough to go about by . themselves did not know what the crucifix was, nor what it meant, nor who- Christ was, nor what He did and suffered for us all. When we read of these children v can we wonder at the failure of secular education ? Can wo wonder that even secularists admit its failure; that they confess that it has brought on the country the terrible evils of immorality and anarchy? For this is exactly what the report drawn up by the commission to inquire-into the state of education in France found at the beginning of the present century. It confessed that secular education was a failure, and that the only way to stem the rising tide of vice and rebellion was to bring back religion and to train the children in the N , light of the eternal principles of right and wrong which are handed down to us by the teaching of Christianity. Again, five years ago an American University professor took with him into the public schools of a large city a picture of the Last Supper. He asked the children what it meant. Here: is his experience: "In answer to the question, one little girl said that it was ' a party' and the others assented. Not a single child had an idea of the significance of the picture/' He asked them then who the central figure was, and one child, with no sign of dissent from the rest, answered : "It is George - Washington!" Thus, in the United States, which Protestants tell us is a Protestant country, the children in public schools seemed to be totally ignorant of religion so unfamiliar with the history of the. life of Christ that ;. •: they were not able to recognise what a picture of the f- Last Supper meant. ' 5 V "\ ■••''•*'.' .. .";;;/'' These two examples illustrate forcibly to what a x ~ pass the experiments and the fads of modern educationI alists have brought us. The Reformation which cast t \ loose from the old restraints of Christianity also' ruined the educational ideals which were the result of centuries . '. of Christian thought on Christian principles, As Pro- | testantism became in a short time a thing of impulse

and of individual whim) so. too education ceased to be * regarded as a mental discipline, and successive experi- I! mentors had their way hith it. until it" became as in- ? • capable as anything born of licence must become for the I training of young people, whose end in -life is -to know > love, and serve God her© and to enjoy Him for ever hereafter. Hence the: chaos, the disorder, the perpetual chopping and changing. in what modern States call their educational systems, Hence the fruitless ex- - periments and the wasted effort and the squandered money, of all which the result is almost total ignorance of the things that matter most, and total unfitness for the battle of life. Hence, too, the sordid stories of juvenile crime, the corruption of individual, family and public life, and'the degeneracy and the paganism of nations like New Zealand, where there are so many products of the State School who use the sacred name of Jesus only in blasphemy. The Christian educators never lost sight of the fact that it avails a man nothing to gam the whole world'if he suffers the loss of his own soul. The post-Reformation theory seems to be that the soul does not matter and that the turning out of a eugenic animal is more important than the training of a virtuous citizen for whom purity and honesty and • truth .are more than honor and wealth. The Christian teachers had a clear goal before them always, and they . had fixed principles to keep them from error; but the secularists have no permanent goal and no fixed principles to guide them if they had a goal. As the Reformation brought chaos among Protestants, so did it bring confusion among Protestant educationalists. At fh?st' it almost destroyed- education 'in Protestant countries. In England, for example, the great Universities of Oxford and Cambridge nearly had to close as a result - of the plunder and anarchy : which were the harvest of the revolt against religion, and in Germany things were even worse. Then, when the need of doing something to stem the tide of barbarism dawned on the rulers, the folly of cutting loose from the eternal principles of Christian tradition became evident, Education became • a thing of' fads and experiments, a hopeless game for tinkers and amateurs who from that day to this continued to perform their experiments at the expense of the souls of children. Down across the ages the tinkering went on, from the time of Luther to our own little Mr. Parr. And, viewing- secularism-at the present time, the conglomeration which receives the name' of education is the product of three main tendencies due to experimenters whose, fads for some reason or other chanced to survive and kill other fads. ■ We have electivism, which is but. the offshoot of Rousseau's principles, and the modern advocates of that foolish system are worthy disciples of the man whose fitness for educating other people's children.. was demonstrated by' sending his own to a Home. for Foundlings We have Rousseau's Naturalism itself in modified and camouflaged forms and wit 1 - meaningless rhetoric We have the scientific fad dear 15 the followers'of Spencer andto the fees of the sound and proven classical system' which turned rut four-square men and scholars And while we have a conglomeration of all these fads and failures, we have not the one thing which is the essence : of education—religious and' moral', training "Hence we have a crop of children who do 'not know the salient ' facts of the life of Him'wher redeemed us and. will one day be our Judge. Hence,'we' have the private and domestic and public revolt against the. Ten Commandments. Hence, we have magistrates and judges and. social workers proclaiming that as the expulsion of Godfrom the school has caused the'moral ruin of our people so the only remedy is to bring God'back. •••-. '.'.;, '-","v' *7''-' :,r.■■■-■'-■ Looking, on all this,., we cannot■ help .pitying- the:' protesting and complaining Ministers of Education wliohold up their hands m horror, at the Red Socialist Sunday School which promulgates doctrines so uncomfortable " for Protestant Plutocracy. . What right have they who by expelling religion from the schools have taught chilv dren to ignore God and. to make light of vice, to protest when other schools carry out, a J.|ttle*Urther their own 4 principles and attack private property and the half-and- 1 -

half religion which has become interchangeable with Jingoism The secular schools that preach indifference to God and His Law during six days of the week are far more murderous and poisonous than the Red Sunday Schools that on one day of the week proclaim that religion does not matter and that private property is a delusion. The latter are openly and frankly irreligious and un-Christian, but the State- schools are secretly engaged in undermining Christianity all the time. There is no doubt which are the more dangerous to the people, and no Socialist Schools will ever do half as much harm in the world as has been done by the secular schools of France, America, England, and New Zealand. When parsons and Ministers denounce the former, we have 'every right to tell them to take first the beam out of their own eyes; for they are the real culprits in this matter.