RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 121, 24 May 1937, Page 10

RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION

(To the Editor.)

Shy-rAt the annual meeting of the New Zealand Educational Institute a remit was passed: "That it is desirable that instruction ill schools should be limited to. the Nelson -. system." ' During the • discussion that followed a report on the smooth working of the introduction of five minutes daily devotional exercises (consisting of a hymn, a passage read from the Bible, and the Lord's Prayer), Mr. Finlayson is reported to have said: "The report was .most alarming, in that it showed that teachers were falling into line with the Bible-in-Schools' League." Mr. W. P. Williams said that the introduction of these voluntary opening exercises, through permission of the education boards, had been described as a "back-door" method of getting into the schools. As chairman of the executive committee of the Wellington branch of the Bible-in-Schools' League, I ask you to allow space for a reply to these statements. In the first, the words "most alarming" show that many teachers would willingly support the work of the Bible-in-Schools' League if pressure were not brought to bear on them by the official attitude of the N.Z.E.I. Teachers in Great Britain and other countries have no hesitation in both teaching Scripture, and taking devotional exercises . with their children. The ill-effects of this on the children or on the churches* have not been so noticeable as Mr. Slater, who represented Ruapehu, states they are | likely to be. If the effects were so bad, would not religious teaching in the council or State schools of Great Britain have disappeared long ago." Secondly, the Bible-in-Schools' League can hardly be described as employing a. "back-door" ingaining entrance to the State schools, v/hen it openly approaches education boards, and asks for permission to be given to school committees and head teachers to open their schools daily with Voluntary religious exercises. Though at present the Parliament of New Zealand has not granted legal facilities for religious instruction as an integral part of our educational system, yet more and more the evidence points to a demand that there should be a religious and spiritual basis to our education. Body, mind, and spirit form a unity in the human being, and to neglect any of these is to do so with- disastrous result to human character.

May I close with the words of King George V:—"lt is my confident hope that my subjects may never cease to cherish their noble inheritance in the English Bible which in a secular aspect is the first of national treasures, and in its spiritual significance the most valuable thing that this world affords." I am, etc.,

N. F. E. ROBERTSHAWE.