The EDUCATION QUESTION.

Evening Star, Issue 2883, 16 May 1872, Page 3

The EDUCATION QUESTION.

To the Editor. Sin,—-It would tend very much to simplify our present educational controversy if some one could tell us what is meant by a purely secular education. Judging from the tone adopted by certain of our legislators, it would appear that they consider the exclusion of the Bible and the prohibition of all direct religious teaching sufficient to secure that the education given in our common schools shall be purely secular. No such result would necessarily follow. There would still .emain the religious teaching, direct and indirect, contained in all the school lesson books, and indeed in all our standard literature, about which men might and would dispute just as freely as they do about the Bible. There may be secular teaching of certain sciences, such as arithmetic, mathematics, &c; but there can be no truthful and intelligent instruction in history, biography, or morals, when the religious element is ignored. It is not possible to render education, such as is required to make good citizens, purely secular. Not to the church, nor to the clergy, nor yet to the sects, is this difficulty of excluding religion from school training to be charged. ’ Tis the “ divinity which is within us”—the image of Himself in which God creates man, and the consequent career of our race, which render purely secular education a thing impossible. I am, &c., Alexander Ebid. Dunedin, May 16, 1872.