THE EDUCATION BILL.
[TO THB EDITOR Or THE .SPECTATOR:] Sin,—I quite agree with you as to the inestimable value and the suitableness for children of the Scriptural instruction and the prayers and hymns authorised in the Council schools ; and I equally deprecate a sectarian and grasping policy on the part of the Church. But I think it is the urgent duty of the English people to consider during the time given for reflection whether the new Education Bill will be a gain to the country or not.
What is the raison d'are of the Bill ? It cannot be said that from the point of view of education our present system is a failure. Nothing in the Bill itself suggests such a view. The system is working wonderfully well, as human institutions go. The complaints against it are two : one—not to be ignored—that- it adds seriously to the rates; the other, that it is too favour- able to the Church of England. As regards the former, Mr. Birrell, the tone of whose speech deserves admiring recog- nition, admitted obiter : " The Bill means money." It increases largely the cost of our elementary education, without even professing to extend or improve it. But the other com- plaint is -what has produced the Bill. The Nonconformists, who are triumphing in the success of their agitation, have been alleging that under the Act of 1902 they are compelled to pay through the rate for religious teaching which is not in harmony with their views. (It is an interesting historical fact that their actual views are far more in harmony with the Church Catechism than with the religious opinions held and taught by their own leaders of less than a hundred years ago.) Any child can be withdrawn from the Church teaching ; but the grievance is that some portion of the rate, however small—for the question is one of conscience, not of money—pays for the teaching of
Church doctrine. •
The aim of the Bill is to remedy this grievance. What are its provisions ? It would leave Council schools as they are. The dual system of schools would become a triple one. There would' be (1) the local authority schools ; (2) the transferred Voluntary schools, or the schools of denominational facilities; (3) the schools of extended denominational facilities. For the use of the buildings of the transferred schools the local authority would pay rent to the trustees of the fabrics. The Bill appears to say nothing as to what iii to be done with the rent. But it permits denominational instruction to be given in a school of de- nominational facilities on two mornings of the week. It does not require that this should be given gratuitously, nor that it should be given by laymen. As Mr. Birrell pleasantly observed, his Bill would restore to the clergyman his canonical right to teach, which bad been taken from him by Colonel Kenyon-Slaney and the Act of 1902. The Bill raises the vision of a curate, with stipend partly paid out of the rate, going into the State school twice a week to address a little denominational mob of children, and exhorting them to be staunch Church children, and not as their Nonconformist schoolfellows in the adjoining room. The teachers on the staff will be apt to have a strong opinion as to the effect of this amateur instruction on the discipline of the school.
The supporters of the Bill claim for it the merit of abolishing
tests for teachers. There is no clause of the Bill abolishing tests, because there are no formal tests to abolish. But it is justly assumed that managers now %elect for head-teachers those who will not be unable or unwilling to give the prescribed religious instruction. It would remain possible under the Bill for selection to be similarly made by the local authority and its committees. Mr. Birrell himself expressed the opinion that no local authority would be so un-English as to appoint other than Catholic teachers to Catholic schools. Does any one suppose that if an assistant- teacher became known as a Freeth ought lecturer a local authority would select him or her for a head-teachership ?
It should be borne in mind as an indisputable fact that in no appreciable number of instances have complaints against the present system come either from the parents or from the teachers. The grievance being that of the non-Church ratepayers, is it not reasonable to ask whether they would be better off under the proposed legislation than they are now under the Act of 1902? Those who take joyfully the spoiling of their goods and committal to prison rather than pay the Education-rate represent a much larger number with whom it is an article of faith that the State should not interfere with religion, and who are doing what they can to liberate religion from State patronage and control. Can they conscientiously promote legislation under which religious instruction, devised and regulated and patronised by the State, would be given in the schools which the State creates, and the Church Catechism would be taught at the cost of the State in half the schools of the country, and the Roman Catholic religion would be taught under the. express sanction and at the cost of the State in a smaller group of the State schools ? I should have thought that this would seem to Nonconformists of sensitive convictions like being tossed out of the frying-pan into the fire.
Mr. Birrell has more than once expressed the pious hope that his Bill would exorcise for ever the demon of religious strife from the sphere of education. When we look at the actual Bill, we see reason to fear that it would, on the contrary, stimulate religious partisanship. The Church and the Roman Catholics would be so dependent on the goodwill of the local authority that elections to the County Councils would almost inevitably be 'turned into religious conflicts. Parents who have been hitherto let alone will be required to declare themselves for or against some form of religion, and even the young children will be ranged as partisans of one religion or another.
The openly profesled object of this Education Bill is not to promote education, but to bring religious peace to the land. If it inky be reasonably expected that instead of being a halcyon the Bill will be a stormy petrel, and will excite and embitter and extend religious antagonism, why should we turn it into an Act ? Why should we incur great expense and unlimited trouble to introduce a system which will stultify the Nonconformists and offend and alarm the Church ?
Kirkby Lansdale.
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