“BRING BACK BIBLE”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 380, 14 June 1928, Page 16

“BRING BACK BIBLE”

PRIMARY SCHOOLS’ NEED

INVERCARGILL RESOLUTION Press Association. INVERCARGILL, Wednesday. The Rev. E. O. Blamires, organising secretary of the New Zealand Bible in Schools League, with Mr. H. Holland. M.P. for Christchurch North, and sponsor of the Bill in the House of Representatives, addressed a largely-at-tended public meeting this evening, at which a resolution was unanimously carried condemning the present system of education for its entire secularly, and demanding from Parliament the restoration of the Bible to primary schools.

Interviewed on the question, they said that meetings were being held this month throughout New Zealand, where they was clear evidence of popular feeling in favour of the Bible in schools. No stone would be left unturned to show that the secular system was out of date and out of harmony with the principles of education.

Referring to the Nelson system, they said that while the Bill embraced this .system as far as it was being satisfactorily worked, the league would not accept it as in any way adequate. It was impossible to find voluntary workers sufficient to work the Nelson system as a Dominion-wide scheme, and it was merely a scheme in use outside proper school time on one day in the week as a make-shift under a system entirely secular. None of the heads of the Department of Education viewed it as preferable to the religious exercises proposed at the opening of the school day, bringing primary schools into line with secondary schools. At the conclusion of to-night’s meeting, the Rev. C. J. Tocker, a Presbyterian minister, strongly denounced the treatment of the Bill in Parliament. He expressed resentment that such a great cause should be given less than honest treatment in the manner in which the Bible-in-Schools Bill had been given.