What Teachers May Expect

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 35, 31 August 1905, Page 1

What Teachers May Expect

Little Red Riding Hood, of the nursery tale,, thought for a time that the wolf was really her grandmother. It had donned the old grandam's clothes and lay in seeming helplessness upon her bed. But the old dame's trappings could not cover the long ears and the fierce eyes and the great mouth. These Hetrayed the creature's real nature. In the same way the Bible-in-schools League try to conceal the tyranny of their ultimate purpose with the tawdry frippery of a sham * democracy.' But, despite their best efforts, fang and paw amd pointed nose obtrude through the ill-fitting disguise which they have hastily donned in order to get their teeth into the flesh of the nation. And the Little Rod Riding Hood, New Zealand, young as she is, has already seen enough to learn a lesson of caution from the Leagiue's proposal to decide -questions of conscience by a count of noses, to start a new State creed, to make enforced levies of tithes for the'endowment of an Establishment on Unitarian lines, and to inaugurate an era of religious tests in public appointments.

Some reverend members of the League, whose words we halve quoted in previous* i,ssiies, have plainly intimated the sort of mercy that public school teachers may expect if they dare to fall back upon the mock ' protection ' of the ' conscience clause.' And last week, in the columns of the ' Otago Daily Times,/ another of the controversialists of the sectarianiskig party, Mr. J. Neil, after having stated what he conceived to be the demaniis of the League, added these significant words : ' If the teacher has such a phenomenal conscience as to object to do this, then there will be found plenty who will do it.' Even under a supposedly ' secular ' system Catholic teachers in Otago amd Southland and in at loafit one place on the West Coast, have occasionally had, on account of their religious convictions, sufficient difficulty in securing or retaining the positions that their attainments merited. Our readers will readily recall the case of the Moa Flat school and) the series of disgusting outrages— culminating in the burning of the school and the teacher's effects — which drove Miss Annett from Rongahere. 'If in the green wood they do these things, what shall be done in the dry ? ' The open boycott of Catholic teachers, which is now only am' occasional incident of local educational poli-

tics, would then become a matter ol settled policy, as we have proved it to be in the decadent States of the American Union where the sectarian scheme favored by our Bible-in-schools League is in full and malignant operation.