Secular Education in New Zealand.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 2, 12 January 1905, Page 3

Secular Education in New Zealand.

New Zealand's secular system of education (writes the London correspondent of the Dunedin ' Evening Star ') finds an out-and-out opponent in the Rev. C. Coleridge Harper, Vicar of PalniersTon North, who condemns it unsparingly in a letter to the ' Church Times ' this week. Mr. Harper, who claims that iiis long experience of Sunday schools and day schools In the Colony gives him grounds for believing Ihat he knew his subject well, writes as follows :— ' 1 say plainly and positively that a purely secular system of education is notning less than a national disaster. Nearly all Christian workers, clerical and lay, Church and Nonconformist, in New Zealand are agreed on this. In support of this opinion I will reler to the effect ol such a system in detail and generally. 4My own experience is this : The children are, as a rule, deplorably ignorant of Biblical facts, whether of Old or New Testament. There fs in most an absolute ignorance of that on which we base our religion, moral or doctrinal teaching. Did space allow, I coulii give you startling proof of this ignorance. ' The general effect is, if anything, worse. There is no basis lor moral training ; there is no appeal ; the school training has for its object (so far as the children can see) material advantage only ; duty, moral principle, etc., depend for their enforcement on the nersonal power of the teacher, and notching else. But beyond all this is the influence on the character of the young of the belief that those who are responsible for their training in all that is requisite to equip them fos life see no need for religion, and, in fact, studiously and purposely keep it out of that training as a thing positively harmful. You can imagine the effect, which we in

New Zealand are only too certafoi of. Religion is liooked up|on as quite an extra ; a fad, more or less, of some a means by which the parson lives and " the churches '• flourish, an appendage to life of no vital importance and depending for its claim on the personality of individual clergy. Of course there are many and notable exceptions, b|ut this is, speaking generally, true to the young who have been trained in our primary schools, and if itj is so now, after one generation has been so trained (the system has been in force for twenty-seven years), what will be its «ect on the childr^i of this generation •' ' Theorists in England deny that this will be the result. Ido not theorise, but state positively that where it has been tried it is the result. It is merely a question of fact. It is said tflxat Sunday schools will do all that is necessary. Here again our experience is that the Sunday school is quite inadequate. 'In England you dfon't realise what a help .to the teaching of the Sunday school the knowledge, small it may be, but still something, of the leading facts of our Fafth really is. In our case, the time we ought to give to doctrinal and moral teaching is mainly devoted to laying the foundation, which in England is 'done in t"fie day school/