THE SECULAR PHASE OF OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 6, 11 February 1909, Page 210

THE SECULAR PHASE OF OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM

A DISCUSSION

(By the Editor, of the New Zealand Tablet.) The following article on the above subject — the fifth of the series — appeared in the Otago Daily Times of February 6: — V.— THE ARGUMENT FROM RESULTS : CATHOLIC SCHOOLS AND CRIME STATISTICS. The - advocates of the exclusion of religion from the schools advance a double-barrelled argument from results. This may be summarily stated as follows:- — The secular system has not clearly increased the number of crimes (with which, for convenience, I include offences) committed 'n this Dominion; Catholics, on the other hand, despite their religious system of education, show in the statistical returns a greatly disproportionate number of crimes. The inference is sufficiently obvious. The first *part of this argument has been tested and found wanting; the second is here under review. As shown in the fourth article of this series, the whole of this statistical argument is dominated by the following consideration : — Good principles of action must be assumed to produce good results in action, except in so far as these results may be hindered by external obstacles, such as human frailty or malice, etc. An anti-Christian philosophy may indeed contend that Christian truths and principles are bad in themselves, and lead to bad results. But throughout these articles I assume that the defenders of the secular system are believers in at least the fundamental verities of Christian faith. With the non-Christian philosophies one argues along different lines. Now, Catholic schools, like other truly Christian schools, put" into the place of first importance the Ten Commandments, the love and worship of a Personal God and His Christ, and the assiduous training of the conscience and the will to virtue. If all this leads of itself to the prison cell or the hangman's slip-knot, it is high time to dynamite Christian churches", and to send the Christian clergy on tumbrils to the bonemill. Besides, on philosophic groxinds, we must not assume that pious Catholics are, as a body, so beefwitted as to make great sacrifices for a generation to maintain a system of "schools, if these, like Fagan's den in ' Oliver Twist,' are practically academies of crime. The argument proves a vast deal too much. Here^s a charming variety of its ' fallacies of figures,' which show that it nearly as dangerous to handle statistics without logic as it is to handle a ' live ' wire without protected palms. 1. The crime argument against religion in the schools assumes the completeness of our records of crime and of crime by religious denominations. But .whole classes of crime (including such' prevalent enormities as pre-natal -murder) are seldom discovered; only a relatively small number of arrests are made for crimes discovered; not much more than half tae persons charged with crime are convicted ; and only a fraction of those convicted have their religious denomination entered upon our statistics of law and crime — namely, those who, after conviction, are sent to prison. Thus, out of 27,561 persons convicted in the Supreme, District, and Magistrate's Courts of New Zealand in 1906, only 2439 received 'sentences of ' peremptory imprisonment,' while 3476 had the option of escaping durance by. payment of a fine. — (New Zealand Official Year Book, 1908, p. 230.) Why draw wide conclusions against religious schools upon a fractional part of the facts of the case ? * '

,2. The crime argument against religion in education, as commonly stated (e.g., Otago Daily 'Times, January 6, 1909), is 'based, riot upon a comparison of the gravity of the crimes committed, nor even upon the total number of crimes, but only upon, the number of crimes that are punished by actual This argument makes a goose quill count' for as much as a warship — it assumes

that it is the number, and not the weight, of the delinquencies that tips the balance of legal wrong-doing to this' side or to that. The denominational crime table in the Official Year Booh (1908, p. 230) lumps together, for instance, under heading ' Convicted on ' Indictment,' large classes of legal misdeeds, from quack Burgery on an ulcer up to wilful murder and to abominations of an unmentionable kind. It" gives no details as to the distribution of specific offences and crimes amongst the different religious denominations. 3. The argument' of the gaol records against religion in the schools assumes that religion is the only factor in our prison-punished crime. There are mysteries in crime of which no man holds the key. But among the known factors of the. problem are the following : The comfortable and well-to-do furnish our prisons with the more detestable criminals — those that sin against the greater light, with less of blind passion and- more of perverted volition. The poor supply, perhaps, the best and brightest examples of every Christian virtue. But the sins . they commit are much more likely to appear in the courts and to earn punishment in prison. And, numerically, the vastly greater part of our convicted prisoners come from the (financially) lower social'' strata. We find among the great bulk of our prison population a low social status,- poverty in a greater or* less degree, undesirable environment or associations, often some measure of physical or intellectual or moral degeneracy, religious education rare or brief, and (extremely commonly) practical irreligion, often of life-long duration. Why are all these circumstances ignored, and the rare and unlikely factors — religion and religious education — alone taken into account? A child religiously educated may, indeed, grow up a criminal — but only by disregarding the truths and principles of conduct instilled into him at school. The vast bulk of our criminals become sinners first and criminals afterwards, chiefly because they push' the secular principle of our public school system to its logical issue^— by banishing God and religion from the whole .of their lives. ,So far as our crime statistics may be an argument against any school system, they .tell against the secular system, and against that alone. 4. The argument of the prison statistics falls into the further error of supposing- that Catholics are "an integral seventh of the population of New Zealand. As a matter of fact, they are only a numerical seventh. To be an integral seventh Catholics should be a seventh of all the principal sections of the population — of the landowners, the merchants, the farmers, the manufacturers, the professional classes, the mine-owners, the shopkeepers, and the rest. But this is notoriously not the case. The vastly greater part of New Zealand Catholics are of Irish birth and of the first generation of Irish descent. Owing to the statutory destruction of Irish industries, the official starvation of Irish education,- and the wholesale Irish land law confiscations which have been carried out almost continuously till a comparatively few years back, the Catholic population of these countries belongs in an overwhelmingly high proportion to the poorer and the poorest classes — namely, to those that furnish the numerically greatest (but not necessarily the worst) part of our prison population. For purposes of comparison Catholics should, therefore, be contrasted in the matter of crime, not with the total population of the country, but in proper proportion and class by class with' the classes to which they belong. Catholics number about one in seven of our total population. What proportion do they hold among our poorer and poorest classes? Statisticians do not say. But it is probably safe to say that they nxe, proportionately, twice, or over twice, as numerous in these classes as the members of other chief denominations taken collectively Are Catholics in this Dominion represented on the crime calendar, or in the prison returns, above their proper proportion of those sections of the population to which they belong? There is nothing whatever ~ in our statistics of crime to suggest, much less to grove, r this. > 5. The gaol return argument against religion in the school assumes the equal all-round liability of offenders to imprisonment. But this is not_ so. • The mercurial disposition of the Western Celt (which is a racial, not a religious, trait) impels him, when tipsy, more than his phlegmatic neighbors, to offences of pugnacity; while his greater comparative poverty makes him do his drinking more in the open, where he is relatively liable to arrest, and exposes him relatively more to imprisonment, on account of his greater inability to" pay a fine. He is, in so far, relatively more exposed to- enumeration on the denominational statistics of legal crime. Moreover, the Irish National School system is not properly "a religious system, at least in the Catholic meaning of the term. 6. The prison argument against religion . in the school assumes that Catholic criminals become criminals precisely because of the religious principles and practices which they learned in the Catholic schools. But (a) this takes it for granted that all the Catholic prison population ' has been

trained in Catholic schools. As a matter of fact, only in rare cases have they been so trained. For a considerable time past, for instance, there have been very few "ex-pupils of Catholic schools in the Dunedin prison. Not one among 30 alleged .Catholics in the Lyttelton prison on, January 10 claims to have had the training of a Catholic school, and only eight (names available, but statements not verified) who assert even brief attendances at a Catholic school. In Wellington prison, in March, 1908, there were 36 reputed ' Roman Catholic ' prisoners (names all available) ; only *two of these had a ' fairly regular ' Catholic school training, four were more or less ' casual,' and 30 never saw the inside of a Catholic school, (b) By implication the gaol returns argument puts the responsibility of alleged disproportionate crime upon the religious principles and practices taught in -the Catholic schools. This means, in effect, that the more loyal children are made to the law and love of God, and the more fervent Catholics they become, the more likely they are to commit crimes that will mew them up in gaol ! The obvious remedy would be to teach children to despise God's love and defy His law. But this is precisely what the great bulk of our prison population, Cajtholic and nonCathotfc, have done. Out of 36 alleged ' Roman Catholics ' in Wellington prison in March, 1908, 25 (names available) admitted not eyen having made their first Communion. Out of 30 in Lyttelton prison on January 10, 27 (names available) admit that they grossly neglected or never practised their gaol religion. The absence of the Catholic chaplain prevents my giving the figures for the Dunedin prison. In plain terms, the great bulk of our prison population have adopted — and pushed to its logical conclusion — the v secular school principle of excluding religion and its truths and principles and influences from the real business of life. And in doing so, they have become de-christianised and demoralised pari ijcissu.

7. The gaol returns argument against religion in the schools assumes that statistics, not of total crime, but of prison-punished crime, afford an accurate criterion of the moral condition of a people — or, rather, of the moral results of systems of education or religion. This fallacious contention was sufficiently dealt with in the last preceding article of this series. Legal misdeed does not necessarily connote sin (moral guilt). And even if it were proved up to "the hilt that the pupils or ex-pupils of Catholic schools committed a greater numerical proportion of legal crime, class for class, than the adherents of other creeds, it would not necessarily follow that they were therefore worse sinners in the sight of God.

8. The gaol roll argument assumes that religious denominations of prisoners are correctly stated. But they are not. And even if they were, this would not prove a disproportionate amount of crime, class for class, among Catholics. But on what basis are the vague denominational returns of crime made? Simply on the unchallenged and unverified non-oath statements of convicted persons — many of them criminals whose uncorroborated oaths would not be accepted in any court of justice in the Dominion. The same remark applies within limits, as regards age, nationality, etc.

Wrongful entries of religious belief on the prison registers may, of course, operate against any given creed. A ten years' investigation of' this phenomenon has, however, convinced me that Catholic prisoners very rarely deny their faith, however much they may have fallen away from its practice. But Jt is, I think, as well known to police and prison officials as to Catholic prison chaplains in these" countries that the balance of denominational misdescription is made to fall greatly against "Catholics, and that the return of the alleged religious beliefs of prisoners are worthless, and worse, for purposes of statistical information and comparison.

The Eastern mind is proverbially a riddle to the Western. A far deeper riddle to East and West alike is the psychology (or study of the mind-working) of the criminal. For we are here dealing largely with the irreligious, and to a greater or lesser extent, with the physical, morally, or mentally degenerate or abnormal. The selection of a temporary creed is, with them, often motived by considerations quite apart from religious conviction. Criminals have no doubt their" reasons for wrongly describing themselves as ' Roman Catholics ' on the prison registers. But these reasons are not necessarily always cogent, or even intelligible, to persons - of normal mentality and normal moral sense. Years of investigation - have, however, .convinced me that the following are among the less recondite motives of denominational misdescription : Motives founded on the relatively high percentaTge of Catholics in the police and prison services in these countries (a sort of offset to their under-representation in other State departments); motives connected with the nature, duration, and frequency of religious services in prisons (the Catholic service being, on various grounds, often quite unconnected with religion, usually much appreciated) ; the tramp's and criminal's usually strong faith in the sweet accessibility of the priest's

pocket; occasionally a desire to shield their own faiths'. was > for instance, the plea advanced hy Knox, th« Wilhamstown murderer (who was a Sunday school teacher) for falsely describing himself as a « Roman Catholic' Among the ' Roman Catholic ' population of our prisons we constantly find the following classes : — (a) ' Roman Catholics ' by baptism; religious belief, and, to a greater or lesser extent, by practice. These, are comparatively few, and are usually ' in ' for the smaller classes of legal misdeeds. (b) ' Roman Cathplics ' whose only, or almost oniy, connection with the Church was the rite of baptism in their infancy. The vast majority of the (approximately) genuine ' Roman Catholics ' of our prisons belong (as already stated) to. this class." Many of them are the children -of mixed marriages or of vicious homes, and not one of them had the benefit of training in a Catholic school. The Church's idea of this class of courtesy ' Roman Catholics ' is sufficiently expressed in the decree of the thirteenth session of the Council of Trent : ' Living let him be" prevented from Centering the Church, -and dead let him want Christian burial.' . - . (c) Other * Roman Catholics ' of our prisons are doubtful—the balance of suspicion being Often, if not generally, against the correctness of their religious -designation. (d) A. varying, but always appreciable, proportion of gaol ' Roman Catholics ' have never been such at any period of their lives. Some of these frankly admit their fraud; others among them are shown to be certainly not 'Roman Catholics,' partly by the known facts of their, personal history, partly by their (greater or less) familiarity with nonCatholic forms of prayer and expression, coupled with a bountiful ignorance of the most elementary notions of Catholic worship or devotional exercises. Seyeral bogus ' Roman Catholics ' are at present on the register of the Dunedin prison. Some of them, (names available — one of them never a Christian), admit their misdescription. The complete list will not be available till the return of the chaplain; but I may state that some time go he expressed the conviction that little more than half of the 'Roman Catholics' then on the register had any real title to the name. In Wellington prison, early in 1908, the three worst ' Roman Catholic ' criminals (names available) admitted to the chaplain (Rev. C. J. Yenning) that they had never been Catholics; other alleged ' Roman Catholics ' were betrayed by their tongues; still others were doubtful. Some three months ago there were thirty alleged ' Roman Catholics ' in the Wellington prison. 'Not a dozen out of the thirty,' said a prisoner to the Rev. C. J. Yenning, " ' are Catholics it all; I hear them talking about it every day.' — (New Zealand Tablet, December 24, 1908.) That, is, of course, a prisoner's statement. In itself, it is prpbably as good as that of the others. And in every case it broadly illustrates a tendency to . a particular denominational masdescription of which every^ prison in New Zealand furnishes, some — few or many — examples. Some very interesting present-time cases in point are promised to me from the Wellington

prison.

Even if a higher crime record .were plearly established (and it cannot be), class by class of our population, against Catholics, this would in no way affect the moralising value of the truths and principles taught in their churches and schools. Scandals were foretold in the Church, of Christ. And the Jews were God's chosen people even at the time when, owing to their wickedness, His sacred name was ' blasphemed among the Gentiles.' — (Is. lii., 5; Matt, xxiii., 23.) Their wickedness arose through defiance of God's law, not through fidelity to it. And so it is with the children of the new dispensation. ' . Our statistics contain nothing whatever to indicate — (a) that Catholics in this Dominipn are proportionately more criminal, class for class, than the adherents of other creeds ; or (b) that they are less moral, class;ioi class. And we must a priori dismiss, as even ludicrously against the probabilities, the inference that the religious truths and principles instilled in their schools tend* of themselves to issue in vice or crime. An educational .or religious system is to be judged, not by a fractional part of its adherents' sins or legal offences or crimes — not by those tlat defy, but" by those that faithfully follow, its principles and preceptsr There should^be no need to remind Christian men and women what would happen, on' the" one hand, if all children lived ,ilp to the teachings of the religious schools;* nor, on the other hand, what would ensue- if the children of this Dominion put into practice, during the whole of their lives, the principle of ignoring God arid religion which the State has forced upon the best and most impressionable and most formative years thereof. So far as education may tend to sin and crime, that tendency is to be sought, not in sthe religious, but in the secular, school.

There are m Victoria 45 landed estates worth £7,501,000, or an average of £166,000.