The Manawatu Herald. Saturday, March 13, 1909. A SECULAR SYSTEM OF EDUCATION.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 452, 13 March 1909, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Saturday, March 13, 1909. A SECULAR SYSTEM OF EDUCATION.

Tiik New Zealand Herald publishes some interesting and somewhat lively correspondence between Bishop Neligan and Sir Robert Stout, concerning the reported statement by the former in a sermon preached in London, “ that the country settlers in New Zealand were in danger of lapsing into Paganism owing to purely secular instruction being given in the State schools-” In Sir Robert's last reply to the Bishop he says; ‘ ‘ I feel sure that if you had examined the statistics of crime, for example, and had witnessed the growth of altruism in New Zealand during the last 40 years, you would have found that ethically our people had improved ; the people who are the most criminal are not those who have been trained in secular schools. Relatively to our population serious crime has lessened since 1577, and the New Zealanders trained in our secular schools compare more than favourably with those bought up under the sanctum of ecclesiasticism. Other people than those of New Zealand have realised the advantage of purely secular instruction. I need not point to Fra tree —the people there had been trained for a century for ecclesiastics. How comes it that the people so trained adopted the secular system ? If there is one city in the world which might have been expected to appreciate the advantage of Church teaching, surely it should have been Rome ; yet Rome has just adopted, according to the information in the Press, a secular system of education. The struggle in England amongst the Churches, each attempting to get State-aided schools to teach its creed, might, I should have thought, have shown that the State school must be secular.’’