EDUCATION & RELIGION

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1460, 7 June 1912, Page 6

EDUCATION & RELIGION

w .VIEWS OF BISHOP CLEARY. POSITION OP KOMAN CATHOLIC'S. IBy TeleernDh—Press Asiocl&tlon.l Auckland, June fi. -At the Education Commission, Mr. Mahon, of the Grammar School stall', expressod tlio opinion that the Government grants for secondary education were 100 small, the salaries of teachers needed increasing, and the classes were tco large. He suggested a modification of the manual and technical instructions, and considered examinations were overdone, Speaking ol' .scli-ilni-ships, he said the country winners should be paid an allowance, to enable them to attend the secondary schools in town.

Dr. C'lcary, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Auckland, in the course of his evidence, asked £ar an amend,'nont of the Education Act to enable scholarships and tree place-* to be held at any oi' the many excellent secondary schools conducted bv Catholics in New Zealand. AH scholarships and free places should be available as a matter of course and right at all secondary schools that were open to Government inspection, and educationally up to Government programme. 'J'hc Bishop, going on to refer to primary schools, said: "It is a sound principle of statecraft that taxes which are levied «rom 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 the golden rule. Our Catholic srihools, and many other religions schools, long formed a part of the State, system. \\ e did not withdraw from that system. We were excluded from it by Act of Parliament in 1877. To many of the legislators of tho time, that measure was a wellintentioned effort to secure what is an absolute impossibility in any svstem of education, liamelv, neutrality, in regard to religious faith. Now l wish to direct tile particular attention of the Commission to tile most serious and radical defect in the public school system. The religious schools were not alone' excluded bv Act of Parliament from their previous standing as public schools, but they were excluded on what is, in elfect, a dogmatic religious _ test. This test is supplied by sundry views of religion, by sundry religious dogmas, which constitute the'foundahon of the peculiar phase of our Education Act. I will here mention only one or two of these underlying dogmas." The first is this, that religion has 110 necessary or useful placo ill school training. The second dogma is this, that a political majority has the moral right to\oxclud<? Teligion from the place which it has ocimmemorial ages in education. Take away these dogmas and von sweep aside the foundation on which 'the secular phase of our Education Act is based. Moreover, our 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 w'ho cannot in conscience accept tlieVo dogmas. In view of the compulsory clauses of the Act, and 111 the absence over wide areas of ail alternative system, "the onlv alternatives for dissentients are the following They must either do violence to their conscientious convictions or tliev must pav for the educational system 'which their "conscience demands, and at the same time pay in taxation for the system which their conscience rejects. Here we have in practical working what I liavo already described as a system that in elfect allots educational taxation on what is fundamentally a dogmatic religious test. The legislators have obviously failed to establish a system objectively neutral in all that concerns religion. In fact, objective neutrality in this connection is as much an impossibility as a. square circle. 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 thai can accept those views of religion upon which our Education Act is based. We ask only for equal treatment of consciences. In education'. T know that this would nresent certain difficulties, but the difficuHiesVe superficial. New Zealand statesmanship has met and conquered greater, arid Canana, Germany. Belgium, .Scandinavia and ninny other lands show that given goodwill we al«n mnv arrive at a iust "ttlenient of this radical dcfect in our education system.

. Mr. IT. Millies. Principal of tho Trainjng College, speaking as a taxpayer, said lie telt the peonle of New Zealand were getting good value for their money in to gard to the education system. Anion"- the reforms he would suggest were increases ■ n the lower salaries in the normal schools end that the board should have more latitude in the metier of provi'din" practice. He considered secondary teachers should be trained.