THE TABLET ON OUR SCHOOL SYSTEM.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VIII, Issue 2296, 15 May 1886, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE TABLET ON OUR SCHOOL SYSTEM.

We have been pained to 6nd that some, calling themselves Catholics, Imve taken part in the lute committee elections, and even proposal) most determined anti-Catholics as members of these Committees,- It is to be supposed thatnhese unhappy Catholics, send their children to godless schools and that they consider their faith and morals safe in the keeping of men whose uio3t ardent desire is the destruction of their faith and the consequent removal, of the foundation -• the only real foundation—on which all Christian morality rests. If these Catholics understood the'principles of their religion and were loyal to them, they would carefully keep aloof from all participation in the iniquity of god less education, and abstain from all share in the management of secular schools,'which were established for the express purpose of undermining the faith of their children and warring against the Church of God. We have observed, but in this case with some amusement, the small attendance at the meetings for school committee elections, and the mode of procedure carried out at these. The meeting at C&vershuiu is an illustration of tho care and intelligence with which the guides of the young idea have been selected, and this striking illustration is likely to become historical. But what are we to say of the interest taken by the community at large in these elections'! It would seem as if the community were quite satisfied with anybody as a committeeman; and that the godlessness of the schools, the only thing about which they seem to he zealous, being secured, there is no necessity for anything further, so far us- they are concerned. A few dozen citizens at most, and these not alwavs qualified electors, composed each one of these meetings, and on these busy bodies developed by law the duty, which they seemed very eager to embrace, of electing the committee. The whole thing is a farce—not witty, but absurd" and injurious. The law pretends to establish popular election, and to give the peop'e a voice in. the management of schools, and then to provide that the entire affair may become ridiculous by authorising a sort of handicap, by means of which the administration of our colonial system of education falls into the hands of a few men wbose - quali tications may be judged from the way in which its administrators, from the chairman of the School Board to the astute members of the Caversham Committee, are elected, Catholics may well feel amusi'd and patiently wait till this astrocious system .of injustice, godlessness, and mismanagement falls beneath the weight of public contempt, as it is certain to do some day soon Meantime, Catholics will not only proceed as they have hitherto, but make still greater efforts to provide Christian schools for their ownehildren.