The Temuka Leader TUESDAY, APRIL 3, 1888. THE WINCH ESTER SCHOOL.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1719, 3 April 1888, Page 2

The Temuka Leader TUESDAY, APRIL 3, 1888. THE WINCH ESTER SCHOOL.

There lias arisen some difficulty over the appointment of a teacher to the above school. The Committee met some time ago, and, out of a large number of applicants, selected Mr C. C. McCarthy, teacher of the Catholic Boys’School, Timaru. Four voted for Mr Carthy and two against him. This led to a disruption of the Committee, the two who were in the minority resigning, and a petition was signed urging the Board of Education not to confirm the appointment until after a new Committee had been elected by the annual meeting of householders. The remaining members of the Committee have since met and have passed a resolution urging the Board to confirm Mr McCarthy’s appointment at once, and so the matter stands at present. On next Thursday the case will come before the Board of Education, and the result of its deliberations is looked forward to with great interest. It is alleged that the only objection to Mr McCarthy is that he is a Roman Catholic. We hope this is not true, and there is one fact against such a supposition. The late Chairman of the School Committee, Mr Ensor, not long ago supported the appointment of a Roman Catholic mistress to the school, but he was on that occasion defeated also. This would lead to the conclusion that it was no such narrow feeling prompted him on the present occasion, and that it is more likely he was actuated by a desire to secure the appointment for someone else. Still, in the list of questions put to an applicant for the position of a teacher he is asked wbat religion he professes, and this has always appeared to us very absurd. The system of education professes to be secular, and entirely free from denominationalism. Under such circumstances it appears to us absurd, if not worse, to ask a candidate for a scboolmastership what religion he professes. He is not employed to teach religion—in fact, he is prohibited from referring to it, and consequently it appears to us that it is great inconsistency to question him about his religious belief. But if it is wroug to question a teacher as regards, his religious belief, it must be cruel and unjust to make his religion a bar to his appointment. Such a thing would stamp the Education Act at once as denominational, and the friends of the system had better take care lest they should give it such a coloring. The moment it is made apparent that the present educational system is denominational, and that any sect is debarred from obtaining appointments under it, that moment will sound its death knell. - very sect in the country pays taxation out of which the education system is supported, and if in addition to other disabilities one sect can show chat they cannot obtain even employment under it, then there will be an unanswerable argument in favor of a change, t he friends of the present system would do well to realise this, „ud also that it is by no means firmly , established. 1 he Catholic and the Espiscopalian Churches are opposed to it, but there is a greater and a growing power anxiously watching an opportunity to throw the cost of maintaining education on the shoulders of parents themselves. The wealthy classes, now finding the burden of taxation growing yearly much heavier, are becoming impatient of it, and are casting their eyes on the education system as the means of relieving themselves of some of their load. Without doubt if further retrenchment becomes a necessity tbe present education system will be the first to be attacked, and if its friends give its opponents such unanswerable arguments to raise against it as would be supplied by sectarian exclusiveness, it will suffer by it. As regards the principal question involved in this debate, we have no interest in it. It is to us a matter of indifference who is appointed. We should not have djscussed the matter at all, only that it b&s glready appeared in print in a form not at all calculated to put either party in a proper light. As w# have said, the late chairman, whom we by no means reckon amongst our friends, has been placed in a somewhat wrong light in the affair, and we think it fair to him to point out that jhe ; at any rate, on a very recent occasion showed $ YPTJ different spirit from that which h,C i? said to be actuated by in this matter. The subject is one which ye dp not care to touch, because of it,a sectarian j

aspect, but we think that no one can complain of our effort to put the late chairman in his true position, so that men may have an opportunity of forming a just estimate of his action The whole thing is a very small affair, and will end in smoke. Nine days after next Thursday, when doubtless an appointment of some kind will be made, it will be all forgotten, and things will go on as smoothly as ever,