IS EDUCATION TO BE RETROGRESSIVE?

Marlborough Express, Volume IV, Issue 202, 6 November 1869, Page 4

IS EDUCATION TO BE RETROGRESSIVE?

To the Editor of the Marlborough Express. Sir, —I was very much surprised by the remarks made by His Worship the Mayor at the meeting held last week at the Wesleyan chapel. It has cost the friends of popular Education a vast amount of labor to achieve the freedom from priestly interference in our public school, which we now possess, and yet Sir, Mr. Litchfield publicly declared that he was desirous of opening the door to the pernicious system of sectarian teaching ! The legislators who declared that the duties of the schoolmaster should be strictly secular, conferred on mankind a boon which Bigotry would gladly wrest from them. Mr. L. would like “ the Bible, and especially the New Testament to be read every day in our Public Schools, and its meaning, to be explained!” I quote his own words. Now Sir, I would beg to ask that gentleman only two questions. If he can answer them satisfactorily I shall then be a convert to his views : 1. Is the Bible a fit class-book for the perusal of children ? 2. Where will the advocates of Scripture teaching draw the line of explanation ? I am prepared to prove that the Scripsures are not fit for children to read, whether accepted as inspired, or otherwise ; and utterly incapable of promoting the high moral tone which Mr. Litchfield considers synonymous with religion. The

suggestion that those children might withdraw whose parents objected to religious teaching, is too stale and threadbare to be heeded by any man of common penetration. If Mr. L. is opposed to permissive laws, what is this but permission to have your children branded as infidels, and lay them open to attacks which they have not the power to repel ? lam fully prepared to defend my own opinions, and to abide the issue, but at the same time I should shrink from exposing my children to all the dangers of an advanced guard, which their youth and inexperience would render them unfit to sustain. I am, &c. Philo-Veritas. Blenheim, Nov. 2.