RELIGIOUS EDUCATION AND THE COUNTY COUNCIL ELECTIONS.
[To THE. EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.") SIR,—There is one aspect of the cominc, County Council elections 'which I venture to commend to the attention of all those who ,regard definite religious .instruction as a vital part of education. In the pressure of other considerations there is a danger that the powers of County Councils to help or hinder religious education may be overlooked, yet they are very considerable. Administrative pressure—the bloodless extinction of earlier days—is a powerful weapon. Sehools, whether elementary or secondary, where the managers insist on securing for the children the definite religions teaching for which the trust deeds of the schools provide, may be, and in times past have been, subjected to unfair treatment, amounting occasionally to tyranny. Expensive alterations have been required, while facilities for executing them have been refused ; unjust preference has been given to teachers in Council schools over those in voluntary schools ; every kind of pressure has been put upon denominational secondary schools in order to force them to abandon their denominational character; costly and unnecessary training colleges have been erected by some councils, whose main object appears to be to provide, in competition with the Church Training Colleges, institutions nominally undenomina- tional, but practically irreligious.
Nor is the danger of such proceedings likely to be lees in the future than it has been in the past, The present Government are openly hostile to denominational teaching in the schools. They threaten further attempts at anti-denominational legislation. But this can only be carried by the assistance of the Irish Nationalists, and there is some doubt how far the latter can be relied upon in such a case. If, therefore, the Ministry decide that it is not safe to press forward further legislative attacks on denominational schools and colleges, they will be thrown back more and more on administrative pressure. Under such circumstances, wherever the majority of the members of a County Council are not definitely pledged to give fair treatment to denominational schools and colleges, there is great risk that they may be cajoled or coerced, directly or indirectly, into anti-denominational administration.
I venture, therefore, to appeal to all lovers of religious freedom to-use their rote; and influence ter theSe candidates, and for those candidates only, who can be trusted to carry out the education laws fP_irly and justly to all schools and colleges, denominational cr undenominationaL We-do not ask for any preferential treatment. But we do ask to be protected against that bigotry which is no less repreheusible because by calling itself undenominational it masquerades as religious liberty.—I Chairman of the Joint Campaign Committee for Religious Education in Schools.
19 Great Peter Street, Westminster, S.W.
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