RELIGION IN SCHOOLS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 285, 8 December 1944, Page 7

RELIGION IN SCHOOLS

Sir-The quotations you give from the booklet "Religious Instruction in Schools" express some curious errors and confusions of thought: 1, It seems suggested that religious observances should not be a part of the regular school day because some teachers could not conscientiously lead them and to that extent would be penalised in seeking preferment. However, schools do not exist as a ladder of success for teachers but as a ladder of life for pupils. If religion is a part of proper living it should be an integral part of school life, which is an early stage of living and a preparation for later stages, The only sound reason for excluding religion from education is a belief that it is not a proper part of living. Who is to decide this question? Obviously the people who own the schools -in this case the New Zealand community as a whole. Our national practice is (as I interpret what I see about me) actively pro-religious on the part of a minority, passively anti-religious on the part of another minority, and passively pro-religious on the part of the intermediate majority. If this is so the school day should include some act of worship. Teachers who conscientiously cannot lead it must expect to suffer for their inability to provide what the majority of the community decree to be a service, just as do those who cannot conscientiously give military service. But of course a community is foolish as well as malevolent if it hinders any sort of

conscientious objector from doing work which he will do because he cannot do everything it wants of him. 2. All the above is about religious observances. Teaching what Christianity is and has done is another matter altogether, Any community, whether Christian, Moslem, or Atheist, in its majority practice, is not merely depriving its children of knowledge they need for intelligent living but teaching them false history, ethics, and psychology, if it refuses to describe what the Hebrew or Biblical outlook is and how it has influenced history and our minds. If teachers cannot do this in as objective a fashion as they teach the rest of "social studies" it is mot because "dozens of denominations are (creedally) divided-they are not-but because teachers themselves do not understand Christianity. It is not their fault. They have not had much chance to, even at Training College and University.

A.M.

R.

(Wellington).