THE TRAINING OF THE CHILD

New Zealand Tablet, 4 January 1912, Page 19

THE TRAINING OF THE CHILD

(■:;'■ -^~ A '; : '- /'-;-' [::■''.: ;/./.: ..;/ V /;,; "":- '*/'■;'- -*' ;'/' THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER . - Speaking at the distribution of prizes in connection -with the Marist' Brothers' School, Pitt street, Auckland, on December 21, the Right Rev. Dr. Cleary said in part : In-; closing exercisessuch as these, the spectator has before, him ■■-_ merely ;- one small; phase of the education imparted in our Catholic ; primary and secondary schools. And - that i phase of our s school-work is merely the one which appeals to the ear and eye; We devote as much care and thought and skill as any to the training of mind and hand and Voice and eye. These things have their? proper use and place in - any system of education; { < they are among 5 the useful and convenient things of life. But there is one thing necessary in = education the education -which is a ' preparation for- life—and that is the formation of character; It is the indispensable thing— is the substance of life as we should live it. This may not be proclaimed at every step in our processes of' education, but ; it runs like a ribbon of gold through our whole Catholic school system. Now : character has been well described as 1 life dominated by -principles '-—not dominated by mere impulses from within or by the pressure of mere circumstances from without. And a collection of such principles, covering every department of life, constitutes an ideal. The -business of character-training is, then, c (1) to lay before the child the best and noblest ideal, :'•(2) to get that ideal stamped into the child's mind in the concrete , form of definite principles, and (3) so firmly to establish the habit of acting according to those; principles, - that it will last the rest of life d . :; : Now, this habit can be formed only by the assiduous training of the moral conscience and of the will. And this can be effectively done in no other way but through the beliefs and practices of religion. With us, then, education is inseparably bound up with religion it is education in and through religion. And the religion of which I here speak is ; not something vague and fuzzy and indefinite, not mere speculative philosophy—to make religion vague is to empty it of life and motive force, to make it a mere speculative philosophy is to destroy its ; very essence. Religion as it is intended here means right relations between the human mind and God, conformity -of the human will to the Will of God; it must be clear, it must be definite, must mean doing as : well as believing, it must : mean the | application of sacred truths and r principles *to the facts and acts ,of daily life. The - knowledge of God is the highest : knowledge, the fear of God is the ? beginning of wisdom,, the love of God is its end. We have the one grand message of life that matters most; we know that life-training and character-formation are continuous processes, •:proceeding "upon definite principles, along definite lines; and we know no educational reason why, in the course of v such training, the child should be subjected to opposite influences in the home; and in the school, which is merely an extension of : the home. ■-;/.,. •: Our schools were driven out of the State-supported system on what was, in effect, a religious test; driven out because we believe in the inseparable union of religion with education driven out because our consciences cannot accept the new sectarian dogmas that underlie our Education Act: / namely, , the dogma that religion has no necessary or useful partem education, and the dogma that a political majority has the moral right to banish ; religion from / the .: place which -• it has occupied from immemorial . ages in. the schools. ■■/:«. - - ; ;; . It :is the; right and duty of . parents to '"> watch over and secure the education of their, children in what they conscientiously;believe to be the ;Jbrue religion. 'No political majority can alter or abrogate that dictate of the natural; law. ; ? No political majority has the moral right to ; formulate Va : religious".; faith or to "'■ define "a* religious doctrine. These: things belong to the spiritual domain; they are outside the proper functions of the: civil power. Yet here; in this democratic land, we find a group of politicians, unskilled in / the principles

and methods of education, forcing French views of religion and of education | upon the schools, pressing them upon the consciences and purses of dissidents, and turning, them into an established and endowed Stateschool creed! ■ '. 'V _ , ,

: . . It so . happens that this new State-school view of religion quite suits the: consciences of : Secularists* Agnostics, and such. But is r not the right to believe to be deemed as .sacred as the right,', not to believe? Have riot the consciences that reject the State-school dogmas mentioned before, the same right to free instruction as the consciences that accept these dogmas? Why, in a democratic country, make acquiescence in a particular view jof religion the test for State aid ]to : education;?| Why favor one view of religion at th-3 expense of another view of religion? And why, since 1877, penalise our Catholic schools, just because we Catholics' refuse—as we have ever refused— allow party politicians to impose particular religious opinions upon us or to deter-, mine any, one of our articles of faith? Our education; law is ; a hardship ;to : the conscientious ■ objector (the Catholic parent, for instance), it ; is a bad form of sectional legislation, and, in t a democratic land, it is the very negation of one of the groundwork principles: of true democracy. - ' -;; Our Catholic school system is a monumental assertion ■, of the everlasting principles of true child-training; it is a monumental protest against a grave wrorig Mich has been inflicted upon us simply and solely because we cannot in conscience accept 'the new, dogmatic, and sectarian views of religion which underlie our Education Act. ; Into .that, protest- Catholics; have thrown :av vast motive force—of brains, of money, of organisation, of self-sacrifice. It is high .time that we should now begin, in -thorough earnest, to harness^some of i that energy/ into a; constitutional / agitation ; for 'i the ; removal i of-that grievous wrong which -; we have been far too long : enduring . without a voice .and without a line of action leading towards redress. ' - //"-:-' // - /; "■,/ W£