45

1.—13b.

X. A. HUNTEH.

accept ihe League s missing petition on trust. We wished to have the opportunity of scrutinizing the petition, for we desired to lead evidence to show ihe misrepresentation resorted to by the League's canvassers. 1 myself was asked to sign the League's card by a canvasser who repeatedly assured me that there was a conscience clause for teachers, and when 1 finally convinced her of her error, there was no sign of regret for her misrepresentation, but simply the significant " 1 see you will not sign it." On the back of one of our cards signed in Christehurch appear these words: " The wife of this man had signed a Jiible in Schools League card for him without even asking him to consent to the act, being persuaded by the lady who called on her to do so." 11' the Committee will give us the opportunity we shall be glad to bring forward hundreds of witnesses who will testify to this kind of misrepresentation. Was the Bill introduced without petition so that we should have no opportunity of scrutinizing the petition .' In this matter those responsible have not held the scales evenly between the Bible in School League and the National Schools Defence League. Injustice No. C 2 is proposed to use the power of the State to compel attendance at religious lessons. In one outburst of its enthusiasm the Presbyterian organ (the Outlook) let the cat out of the bag: " There are parents who never darken a church-door. Ihe children do not find of their own accord their way to the Sunday school. Attendance there is voluntary. They do come to the day school, for their parents must send them; there only do they learn of God and Christ and the way to heaven." The parent, it is true, is to be offered an odious and unrighteous form of conscience clause. If the League and the Hon. James Allen do not wish to use compulsion, they will at once agree that only those children whose parents or guardians notify thai tiny desire the religious lessons for their children shall attend the lessons, and that no parent shall be required to ask for exemption for his child. The onus of applying should be upon those for whose benefit special and favoured provision is made by the Slate. ///justice No. S. —lt is proposed to compel teachers, who have entered the State service subject to no religious test, to give these religious lessons, and no provision is made for a conscience clause for them. The teachers will be compelled to give the lessons, honestly if they can, otherwise dishonestly and hypooritically, or leave the service. What generous alternatives for the enlightened twentieth century! Under this Bill the Minister of Education refuses in teachers what the Minister of Defence willingly giants to conscientious objectors under the Defence Aei. Is it for the same reason as was urged in Queensland] One of the reasons given by the Hon. A. 11. Barlow, the Minister in charge of Ihe Bill in the Upper House, was. " At least •'!() per cent, of the teachers belong In a certain religions persuasion which is opposed In Bible-teaching in State scl Is; if those teachers were exempted from giving the Scripture lessons the purpose of the referendum would be defeated." The reason for refusing a conscience clause is that the conscience clause is necessary! Further, the teacher who is a pareni is given Ihe conscience clause for his children but not for himself. He may exempt his children from attendance at ihe lessons that he himself is compelled to give. A Government thai lias been ungrudgingly praised for removing certain civil and political disabilities from State employees is asked to place on teachers a more serious disability than that ever suffered by any Civil servant in this country —the odious burden of a religious test. The late Professor Paulsen, the celebrated German moralist and educationist, has said, " No man should be interfered with in his calling as a teacher on account of his dissenting opinions, but only on the ground of pedagogical blunders." Both in 1897 and in 1905 the advocates of this change proposed to grant a conscience clause to teachers. Why not in 1914? Injustice No. }.--!( is proposed to undermine the spirit of truthfulness that now exists between pupil and teacher. I he very foundation of a moral education, and then the bulwark of democracy itself. " The preacher or the teacher." says Paulsen. "is not employed as a hireling to present correct views; it is his business to express his faith, his conviction, and his soul." None are quicker than children in detecting hypocrisy, and if Parliament proposes to make hypocrites of some of its teachers it would be better in Ihe interests of morality that these schools should be closed. Expert pedagogical opinion the world over would endorse this view. Thus the London Times, which is certainly not against religious education, says. "There is something even worse than a merely secular education : that is an education where religion is taught perfunctorily and without an adequate sense of its importance. No oik , will desire thai any teacher to whom the Bible has no religious value, or who does not accept the fundamental conceptions in which its message is based, should be made to use it in teaching others. , ' Injustice No. s. —lt is proposed that the State should classify its citizens and their children according to religious belief. In other words, it proposes t<> stir u]i the dying fires of sectarian zeal anil bigotry. Ireland to-day affords an awful example of what such misdirected zeal and passion may produce. The ill feeling alieaih engendered in New Zealand by this dispute is not inconsiderable. 1 need not. however, stress this point, for members of Parliament, naturally enough, have been the firsi to experience the vehemence of the passions that have already been aroused. Injustice No. o. —lt is proposed to adopt Ihe deliberately dishonesi procedure of demanding from the people a single answer to many questions. Mr. Brailhwaite. of Ihe Dunedin Bible in Schools executive, has disclosed Ihe reason for I his immoral dodge. Many of the people who are strongly opposed to the " right of entry" desire Bible lessons in Ihe schools. By combining the two issues and by shouting falsely "We want the Bible" the Bible in Schools League hopes to induce those people to vote for what they do not want in order to get what they do want. This is a remarkable distortion of the doctrine of "trust the people", or is il a method by which we may "trust the people" without fearing that "tyranny of the multitude" that in 1894 Mr. Allen foresaw the introduction of the referendum would mean? "[f the people give us what we want," says the Bible in Schools League, in effect, "it is the will of the people. If they take what they want it is the tyranny of the multitude."