GOD OR NO-GOD IN THE SCHOOLS?

New Zealand Tablet, 17 August 1911, Page 1561

GOD OR NO-GOD IN THE SCHOOLS?

THE DISCUSSION : A CRITICAL SUMMARY

By The Rt. Rev. Henry W. Cleary, D.D.

' PART 111. 'THOSE THAT FLY MAY FIGHT AGAIN.'

lI — THE ' EVENING POST'S ' « DEFENCE ' OF THE SECULAR SYSTEM

(Continued from last issue.)

Here, again, we get back to the same considerations as before:—

1. The New Zealand Education Act nowhere provides that the system of public instruction, shall be 1 undenominational.' (The undenominational theory is merely an inference of those supporters of the secular system who have yet to learn the meaning of the terms 'denominational' and 'undenominational'). 2. The New Zealand law merely provides that the teaching in the public schools shall be ' entirely '• connected with the ' present world' and the ' present life only ' —as set forth above. 3. It would, therefore, appear to be no violation of the letter of the law to impart to pupils any denominational view of life — of its origin, duties, and destiny with the following provisos only: (a) that such denominational view of life shall ' entirely' exclude the spiritual and supernatural; and (b) that it shall not transcend the powers of matter, 'and shall limit itself to the interests of this present world only. Here (as in the previous cases considered) the law apparently leaves the door wide open to the propaganda of any and every form of materialistic denominationalism that the- state of public feeling, at any particular period, may render it ' good policy ' to impart to children in the public schools.

- IV.—The 'Prediction' Fallacy. The ' prediction' fallacy consists in dark forebodings (1) in regard to the dissensions that would follow the re-introduction of religion into the schools, and (2) in regard to the breaking-up of the present system of public instruction. Reply: (a) In discussion, prediction has, proverbially, a rather ' slumpy ' argumentative value. Indeed, George Eliot somewhere describes it as ' the most gratuitous form of human error.' (b) Neither of these predictions has anything to do with the justification of our secular system, from the Christian view-point of life, and of its duties and destiny. They are, therefore, beside the present issue, (c) The scared prediction as to the ' fierce resentment and never-ending controversy ' that would follow the re-introduction of religion into education ~ has been amply met on pages 9-10, 31 of the present publication. To the matter there set forth, there has been no reply. (d) There are, en Continental Europe, two countries which grew weary of the fad of pure, legalised secularism in the schools, and restored religion to its old and prescriptive place in State-aided public instruction. These are Holland and Belgium. Holland is. well described by the rationalist historian Lecky as ' a country where Evangelical Protestantism is, perhaps, more fervent and more powerful than in any other part of the Continent.' In 1857 a system of ' secular national education ' was established there. The schools were denounced as ' atheistical,' ' without prayer, without Bible, without faith.' The Dutch Protestant majority then did what the Catholic minority in Australia and New Zealand have been doing for a generation. By 1888 they had (says Lecky, p. 72) ' no less than 480 Bible schools supported by voluntary gifts, with 11,000 teachers and 79,000 pupils. These schools had an annual income of three millions of florins; they had a subscribed capital of 16 millions of florins, or about £1,340,000.' In the battle for religious education, (says the same author), 'the Evangelical Protestants were supported by the Catholics.' The result of this happy union of the friends of true education resulted in the continuation of the purely

* Bishop Cleary’s latest work, of which the above is an instalment, is procurable at all Catholic booksellers. * .■■■■■ l. • *

secular system for those who desire it; but, side by side with this, the Evangelical and Catholic schools were brought into the State scheme, and supported by public funds, on a system much like that which exists in England, and which has been very generally accepted.' In Belgium religion was (as in New Zealand) banished from the schools by the loi de malheur (law of misfortune) in 1878. With the fall of the secularist party, in 1834, religion ceased to be penalised, by law, in the schools. The new Catholic Government ' took the primary schools from State control, and placed them under the communes, leaving each commune to decide whether -or not religious instruction should be given; the State subsidised these schools, on condition that they would accept the State programme, and would submit to State inspection.' Denominational schools ' are eligible for subsidies from the State, the province, and the municipality or communeone or more of them. The Church is empowered to supervise and arrange for or provide religious instruction in the schools. If the communal schools do not give it, the clergy may, either by themselves or their lay nominees.' We are not now discussing the merits or demerits of any particular scheme of religious education. We are merely placing before the Evening Post two concrete instances of the national restoration of religion to its place in the schools, and letting that paper reconcile these facts with its dolorous prophecy, as best it may. The Post has the whole burden of proof upon its shoulders. It is for it to show—if it can(l) that (and just how) the re-inclusion of religion burst up and destroyed the school system in Holland and Belgium ; (2) what, precisely, were the volcanic educational evils resulting therefrom ; and (3) just how and why a restoration, that was so. easily and speedily effected in these two countries, should be deemed wildly impracticable or wholly impossible in New Zealand. An ounce of hard fact is worth more than a ton of mere, unsupported, predictive assertion, such as that which the Evening Post advancesfor lack of better 'argument.' (4) Moreover (as has been shown already), in Holland and Belgium, as well as in France, religion was driven out of its prescriptive place in the school-preparation for life, precisely because legislative majorities in those countries did not believe in God or religion or a future life or immortal human souls. In this, they were at least consistent. It is for the Evening Post to justify —if it can— a Christian view of life, and of its duties and destiny, that same purely secular system which Continental and other unbelievers defend on an atheistic and anti-Christian view of life and of its duties and its destiny. In every discussion on this subject between Christians, all lines of argument converge upon this deadly —which (thus far) the Evening Post, and the other Christians who share its views, either dare not, or cannot, read. And if any reader deems that this is wearisome reiteration,' the present writer's true and sufficient apology is this that this issue lies at the root of the whole discussion, and that the Evening Post not alone avoided it 'to the best of its ability,' but likewise persistently endeavored to obscure it by the cloud of irrelevant contentions and personalities which are, here and later on, under consideration.,

V.—The ' Authority ' Fallacy.

Having declined to get . down to the underlying principles and life-views involved in our secular system, the Evening Post ' fortifies ' itself by an appeal to the ' authority ' of Gladstone, Archbishop' Temple, and Dr. Parker (of the City Temple, London). No references, by .the way, were given to the quotations with which it credited its 'authorities.' Gladstone (says the Post) was not an atheist; Temple was not an atheist; Parker was not, an atheist. "But Gladstone, Temple, and Parker were all stout upholders of the , secular system. Therefore the supporters of the secular system are not all atheists, nor is the system atheistic. Reply: (1) Here, again, we have the Post's familiar resort of denying what was not asserted. . (2) Here, too, we find that paper distinctly and improperly suggesting that I made out the Christian supporters of the secular system to be, one and all, really atheists in disguise. And this, in, spite of my plain and repeated

declarations to the contrary, and of my reiterated conviction that numbers of well-meaning Christian people are misled into support of the secular, system because they do not realise what it implies, and whither it is drifting, as it has drifted in France. But in terms as express I have pressed, and still press, for a statement of the Christian principles and views of life, on which Christians support a system which was devised by anti-Christians on Continental Europe for the destruction of all religious faith in the rising generation. To this there has been no answer, (3) The Evening Post makes out Gladstone, Temple, and Parker to -be supporters of the utter exclusion of religion (as in New Zealand) from the working-hours of State-supported schools. This is a cruel misrepresentation of the plain, set terms, in which these three noted English Protestants stood for the inclusion (not the legalised exclusion) of religion from State-aided systems of public instruction. (a) Gldastone's., real views have been sufficiently stated on pp. 32-33, and further reference to them will be found in Section 111. of this Part, (b) The Evening Post's grievous misrepresentation of Archbishop Temple will be made abundantly clear in Section 111. (c) Dr. Parker's name has been amply vindicated (to this there has been no reply). The injustice done to this friend of religious education by the Post will be made still more manifest in Section 111., by an appeal to the context of his remarks, (d) But even if Gladstone, Temple, and Parker were as bitter enemies (as they were friends) of religious education, this circumstance would not alter, by so much as a pin-point, the content and implications of the secular system, or relieve, by so much as the weight of a speck of fluff on a moth's wing, the heavy burden of proof and justification which rests upon the shoulders of the Evening Post and of its fellow-Christian supporters of the policy of driving religion, by Act of Parliament, from its ages-old and prescriptive place in education.

Vl.—The ' Big Stick ' Fallacy.

. The Evening Post avers that 'an overwhelming majority of the people of New Zealand' favor the legalised exclusion of religion from the schools. This is the argument of the physical force of mere numbers which I have designated the fallacy of the ' big stick.'

Reply: (1) We have yet to learn that an overwhelming majority' —or any majority —of 'the people of New Zealand were afforded any direct opportunity of expressing an opinion upon the subject either before or after the expulsion of religion from the schools. (2) No evidence has been adducednothing but the bare assertion of the Evening Post that ' an overwhelming majority of the people of New Zealand stoutly maintain the exclusion of religion,, by Act of Parliament, from the schools. We do not know that, as a matter of fact, a very large body of public feeling in New Zealand desires some measure of religion in the workinghours of the public schools that it has agitated ever since 1877 to have this effected by legislation ; that having (owing chiefly to internal dissensions) failed in this, it has set itself to smuggle in religion somehow ; and that religious exercises have, all along, been (illegally) part and parcel of the daily routine of the State secondary schools. (3) Nobody pretends that that mere popular feeling is qualified to pass an expert verdict on (say) the deep questions of pedagogy (the art of teaching) involved in the rigid legalised exclusion of religion from the school-time ' preparation for life ' and for ' complete living.' The Eevning Post supplies us, in ' charmin' variety,' with the argumentative crudities and irrelcvancies by which so much of ' popular' feeling as exists on this question is aroused and nourished. The ' plain man ' lies under the delusion that intellectual and moral values countor ought to count—for a good deal in determining public policy in regard to education.. But even such an accredited champion and expert as the Evening Post cannot give an account of its scholastic faith; and it makes a count of noses, and an uninstructed, or misinstructed, or ill-instructed local feeling one of the arbiters (if not the final arbiter) in the matter of the most tremendous import to the individual, to the family, and to the nation. Is it not high time that such vital matters

as the underlying principles and methods of education should be as far removed, as is the administration of justice, from inexpert meddling and from the sordid turmoil and clamor of party politics ? (4) The Evening Post calls upon the friends of religion to accept, in this matter, the doctrine of 'accomplished facts.' But (a) why should we sit calmly down and resign ourselves to the wrongs inflicted by this new-fangled and localised scheme of secularised public instruction, which has so suspicious an origin and history, and which, after a fair trial, two of the most prosperous and progressive nations in Europe flung indignantly aside? (b) Have not some, at least, of us read sufficient of history to know how people are given, at times, to dancing and singing around their golden calves to-day, and crushing them beneath their heels to-morrow? Besides, (c) when did the Evening Post itself begin to accept the doctrine of ' accomplished facts' in matters purely political? Do not the accomplished facts' of the Liberal Party's continued successes in New Zealand serve rather to nerve it to stronger' efforts to educate public opinion in a sense favorable to its own Conservative views? In the still mere vital and sacred matter of the school-training of our young citizens for the duties and destiny of life, why should we, the friends of the only true and full education, abdicate our role as teachers and guides, and become, instead, the mere gramophone.records of an uninstructed local feeling? Moreover (5) this Big Stick argument assumes the moral right of a majority to drive religion out of the schools and force the State-creed (already detailed) on the consciences and purses of dissidents. But this moral right we absolutely deny. It is for the Post to prove it—if it can. (6) Yet, again : the Big Stick argument assumes that, in this matter, minorities must, perforce, suffer. Here, however, are the words of a noted English educationist in point: ' "Minorities must suffer" is the old, discarded cry of utilitarianism. It is hopelessly out of date. Democracy, and especially Liberalism, raises the counter-cry: "Minorities must be- safeguarded!" Politics is fast learning from commerce and from science the human, necessary art of specialisation. There are now several .hundred processes in the making of a shoe. Secularists would decree that there shall be one way — way of suppression—for building up the kingdom of politics.' Lord Acton (the historian of political democracy) said at Cambridge University, in June, 1895: 'But what do people mean who proclaim that liberty is the palm, and the prize, and the crown, seeing that it is an idea of which there ,are two hundred definitions? You will know it by outward signs. Representation \ the extinction of slavery, the reign of opinion and the like ; better still by less apparent evidences : the security of the c weaker groups, and the liberty of conscience which, effectually secured, secures the rest.' The view of the historian of political democracy on minority right found eloquent expression in an address delivered thirteen years later by Mr. Sidney Webb, the historian of industrial democracy. 'My first proposition,' said he, is, therefore, the paradoxical one that, whilst it may have been the most pressing business of nineteenth century Governments to deal with the whole people, or, at any rate, with majorities, by far the most important business of twentieth century Governments must be to provide not only for minorities, but even for quite, small minorities, and actually for individuals. The regimental boots and uniforms have got to be made tori t_ each individual soldier, This, when you come to think of it, is just as "democratic," in anv sense whatever, as the merely wholesale method.' But (7) even if an ' overwhelming majority ' of noses were, in this matter, ranged beside the Eevning Post, that circumstance would not in the least explain the Great Riddle: On what particular view of life, and of its duties and destiny, do believing Christians justify a school-prepara-tion for life, which atheists, and unbelievers generally, defend on an atheistic, and anti-Christian view of life' and of its duties and its destiny All roads lead to Rome ' ; and, between Christians, all arguments on the secular system lead, ever and evermore, to this forbidding Riddle, which the Post has avoided as it would the Seven Plagues of Egypt.

(To be continued.)