"POLITICS IN SCHOOL"

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21415, 6 March 1935, Page 10

"POLITICS IN SCHOOL"

WELLINGTON DECISION WELCOMED LECTURES BY NAVY LEAGUE Under the caption, "Politics in School," the organ of the New Zealand Educational Institute, "National Education," welcomes the decision of the Wellington Education Board to refuse the Navy League permission to conduct lectures at schools during school hours. "The league has recently been informed by the board that it cannot see its way to grant it concessions that are not allowed to other bodies," the article says, "and that in future the lectures must be given outside school hours, and at the discretion of the headmaster and the school committee concerned. It is not a question of whether the doctrines of the Navy League are right or wrong, but a matter of applying the principle that just as the teacher is under a professional obligation to refrain from using his position to impose his views on his pupils, so it is the duty of an educational authority to refuse to permit the schools under its control to be used for inculcating the teachings of sectional organisations. "The Navy League may claim that it is not a sectional organisation, but the fact remains that its political philosophy is by no means universally accepted, and is in some quarters strongly repudiated. And if the league urges the overwhelming national importance of its gospel, then it is only one of the numerous organisations with an equallv profound faith in quite different gospels."