SECULAR EDUCATION.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10159, 8 February 1911, Page 4

SECULAR EDUCATION.

Commenting on the attitude of those' good people who are advocating the introduction of the JNew South Wales system of religious teaching into, the State schools of this country, the Lyttelton Times says they cannot afford to ignore the renewed efforts that are being made by the Roman Catholics to obtain special grants for . their own schools. It specially devolves.upon them to show how their scheme can be adopted ■without giving additional force to the Catholic claims and, indeed, without impairing our whole system of secular teaching. At Te Aro the other day, Archbishop Redwood said that until these claims are acknowledged and granted his church would maintain the struggle "in the cause of Cod and religion," and MiMartin Kennedy, supplementing the Archbishop's remarks, urged Catholics to become'"a political party," so as to influence the Legislature in the direction' they desired.. "No one," " says our Christchureh contemporary, "can find fault with the persistence and the enthusiasm of the Catholics in. this matter nor withhold his admiration from the sacrifices they are making for their faith, but the great majority of the' electors- see that if grants were made to one denomination they could not be denied to half a dozen others, and that" the national system of education would have to be recast on less effective and more costly lines. We could not in reason, even in de-' cency, expect the Catholics, to send their, children to schools where sectarian instruction was given during school hours, and directly, the Jfeiv South Wales system was adopted the urgency of their claims would be increased a hundredfold. We do not believe that under the present conditions the Catholics, with their high sense of the duties of citizenship, will disfranchise themselves on aif other subject's for the purpose of forming a political party with the one plank of denominational education; but if 'their children were exposed to the perils of sectarian teaching it would be the only course opeii to them, and there is no saying how much assistance-they would receive from other denominations. This is the problem for which the advocates of the- New South Wales system have not yet suggested a practical solution,"