SECTARIAN SCHOOLS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1693, 31 March 1917, Page 3

SECTARIAN SCHOOLS.

APPRECIATION OF MR. lIANAN’S ATTITUDE.

Auckland, March 29

A deputation of about sixty, including prominent educationists and ministers of religion, waited on the Hon. J. A. Ha nan this evening for the purpose of expressing appreciation of his attitude in refusing concessions to sectarian schools.

Replying, the Minister said he had been in the House about eighteen years, and had always pledged himself to uphold the present system. In replying to requests since the war for concessions for sectarian schools, he stated that he believed they would result in the undermining and disintegration of the present system. He would have been false to Jiis pledges had ho acceded to the requests. He deemed a certain principle essential to the maintenance and stability of the national system, and considered it his duly to always maintain those principles. Thousands of men and women in the Dominion owed a great deal to the State system of education, and they were not now going to alter it so as to deny simi-

Inr benefits to those avlio followed. He avus eonvineed the representations of the (lopiil at ion stood for the greet body of public opinion throughout the Dominion, He thought no Minister of Education nnd no Government having regard to the principle of national education and the interests at stake dare depart from them and allow concessions llmt would ultimately lay the national system in ruins.