THE TIME-TABLE CONSCIENCE CLAUSE.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.']
SIR,—I am surprised to find from your article, last week, on the Education question that one so conversant with the practical working of elementary schools as my friend Mr. Oakley should have given his adhesion to the proposal for a time-table conscience clause. If children are not to be "liable to censure, except from their parents, for non-attendance" on the religious teaching, the majority, of course, will absent themselves, and soon learn to despise the teaching which they are allowed to neglect ; while the minority who are forced to "come in" or "stop in " for the Bible- lesson, while their school-fellows outside are in full enjoyment of their marbles, will no less surely regard the lesson with dislike. I should much prefer purely secular education, or even the absurdity of "the Bible without note or comment," to a scheme which threatens to make the Scriptures either odious or contemptible to the children. There is only one condition on which the time-table conscience clause can be innocuous ; namely, that the alternative shall be, not the Bible-lesson or leap-frog, but the Bible-lesson or some other lesson instead.—I am, Sir, &c.,
W. L. CLAY.
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