EDUCATION AND " HEATHENISM."
THE recent Educational Conference at Manchester seems to have declared itself distinctly in favour of two important principles, (1) the frank admission of denominational and other religious schools into perfect equality with all other primary schools, on condition of their adopting a complete conscience clause, and satisfying the Inspectors of their efficiency as teaching institutions ; (2) the repeal of that provision of the Privy Council which refuses aid to purely secular schools,—or in other words, the admission of purely secular schools to perfect equality with the Church, Denominational, and other religious schools. We agree heartily with both these conclusions, for we are disposed to consider private schools established by honest secularists as a particular species of sectarian schools,—schools in which the sectarian principle takes the form of a vehement prejudice against all religious teaching. And as the most purely secular education is certainly better than none, even on the religious ground, since it undoubtedly opens the minds of those submitted to it to a number of new moral and intellectual influences which are not by any means purely secular,—we do not think it would be right in the State to refuse aid to any well conducted private schools ignoring religious teaching, which it would grant to other private schools partly aiming at the inculcation of their own special views. If there be any considerable num- ber of Jews, Deists, Secularists, or Positivists amongst the working-class, it is clear that their children ought not to be debarred by their peculiar views from such general education as they can get, and it would be very unjust to place schools
specially established for the children of such persons under any special disadvantages to which the schools of, it may be, almost equally eccentric sectarians are not exposed. Of course, in case secularistic principles were directly inculcated at such schools as subversive of religion, it would be essential that they, too, should be subjected to the action of the Con- science Clause, and that the parents of all children attending them should receive due notice of, and be entitled to proper protection for, their children from the inculcation of such con- troversial negations.
But there is a further question of considerable moment as to the general influence which the foundation of new district schools, supported by borough and county rates, will have on the religious character of our primary schools. Under Mr. Bruce's and Mr. Forster's Bill, the School Com- mittee (elected by town councils in municipal boroughs and elsewhere generally by the ratepayers) has full power to manage a district school itself, or to delegate its manage- ment to other qualified persons, under condition, of course, of full compliance with the Conscience Clause and all other conditions imposed to test efficiency. There is nothing to prevent such a school committee from itself setting apart a time for the specific religious instruction of all children whose parents do not object to it ; and they are expressly empowered to hand over their school for certain hours to other denominational managers for this particular purpose. Thus there is practically no limitation at all except the will of the ratepayers, and the views to which the elected members of the school committee are pledged, to the power of the School Committee to inculcate any particular religious faith they please on those of their scholars whose parents do not object. But the difficulty which we foresee in this matter is that the old Church-Rate cry may be again raised. Under the proposed Bill it is clear enough that compulsory rates might be in part used for remunerating the teachers of reli- gious principles from which some of the ratepayers would conscientiously disagree. It is true that their children would not be compelled to attend such lessons,—but neither was it ever compulsory on Dissenters to attend the services of the churches whose rates they paid. The cry was that there was abstraet injustice in compelling any man to contribute at all towards the teaching of what he held to be pernicious or false,—or even towards the repair of the building in which such teaching went forward. We have never sympathized much with those who raised this cry, and not at all with those who objected to support the fabric of the national Church ; but we are quite sure that it would be a great evil for the educational cause if this cry were raised again, as it certainly will be unless great care is taken, in relation both to the tax laid on a parish to build an edifice the accommoda- tion of which may be made over in certain hours to special religious teachers, and to the rate laid on the borough or union for supplying funds for the remuneration of sectarian masters and mistresses. It will be said, not without plausi- bility-, that it is one thing for the State to aid equally all kinds of sectarian schools, in proportion only to the efficiency of their general teaching, and quite another for the public rates by which a school-house is built and a school administered to be diverted in any degree, however small, from the common service of all, to the advantage of any one religious body. Hence we should fear that the elections of school committees will be occasions for very hot sectarian contests, the various candidates either pledging themselves to attempt to obtain the school-house and the aid of the school teachers out of the general lesson-hours, for the Church, or the Wesleyans, or the Baptists, or any other denomination strong in the district,—or else pledging themselves to resist the attempt of any religious body whatever to profit in any way by rates which come from the pockets of all alike.
Now, we must think any opening for contests of this kind would be most disastrous. It would divert public attention from the true work of education, raise all sorts of bad feeling by fomenting sectarian squabbles and attempts to reverse at every practicable election the "religious policy " of the previous School Committees, and run a great risk of so far disgusting the public with the religious element of educa- tion as to endanger the whole system of assistance to denomi- national schools, and risk the introduction of a strictly and exclusively secular system throughout the nation. We do not think that this ought to be risked. We believe that when any particular church or denomination has provided the subscriptions for the school-house and set the school on foot, the public will acquiesce cheerfully in the justice of giving State aid to such a school, without in any way interfering with its denominational character, except so far as to insist on the right of any parent to withdraw his children from the special religious teaching without losing the benefit of its general teaching. But when the school is set on foot out of the public funds provided by a rate, we think the State should decide peremptorily beforehand to what extent anything like religious teaching may be introduced, and should so decide that the whole nation would accept its decision cheerfully. Of all matters that should not be left to the discretion of the local school committees, the religious policy of the schools in the hours to which the Conscience Clause applies should clearly be the first to be excluded.
But what, then, it will be asked, should be the determining principle of the religious policy with regard to the schools established by local rates ? We think it could not be more, and should not be less, than the present rule of the Council of Education, requiring the Bible, or at least the New Testament, to be read daily in every such school,—with a provision allowing the children of any parents who might plead con- scientious objection,—like scrupulous Jews or fanatical Deists, if there were any such, — to absent themselves from such reading. Probably,—at least this is what we are inclined to hope,—the schools founded by rates would be comparatively few as compared with those founded by denominations, and only conditionally assisted by the State. And we say that we hope this, not because we attach any value to the special catechetical teaching either of Church or of other sectarian schools. Our experience has been that nothing is more barren of result than this sort of teaching, that when it does honestly take hold of any mind it does not do so till much later than the school age, when some of the moral perplexities of life have begun to assail the inward nature, and that the probability of the growth of any genuine conviction of this sort is rather lessened than increased by the technical theo- logical instruction of school days, and the kind of disgust it is too often apt to inspire. The growth of any earnest faith is almost always a result either of the trials of life or of the moral influence of some man or woman of vigorous character. We doubt if there be one in a hundred religious persons who was made so in any degree by mere school lessons, though there is certainly much more than that proportion of irreligious persons who have been partly made so by school lessons. But while ad- mitting this to the full, we do believe that, on the whole, there will be found a greater earnestness and a higher standard of purpose in the teachers of Church and Denominational schools than in the teachers of mere secular schools. The special classes for catechism, and so forth, may be useless, or worse ; but those who put their shoulders earnestly to the wheel in a school established on a religious foundation, are more likely to be men and women of high and influential personality, than in purely secular schools. The parish clergyman him- self, probably, — certainly if he is a devoted man in any school, high, low, or broad,—will do a great deal more by his personal influence than by his technical instruction. The danger of non-religious schools is not the loss of the Cate- chism, but the loss of interest in them taken by men and women of the warmest and most earnest type of charac- ter. We cannot afford to lose the highest disinterested zeal of the country in the cause of education, and undoubtedly we should lose a large proportion of it, if we made education exclusively a matter of reading, writing, cyphering, and grammar. It is, after all, the defeat of heathenism,— the training of hearts as much as heads, — which we want to obtain in education. Secular education is something, but education, secular or otherwise, by men and women who make war upon all true heathenism, is of infinitely more importance. It is because we shall get more of this in Christian schools, — the teaching even of reading, writing, and arithmetic by men who think truthfulness, purity, and self-denial of infinitely more importance to their pupils than successful pothooks and compound addition,—which we should not get to so great a degree in non-religious schools, that we hope to see the denominations competing eagerly for Govern- ment assistance, instead of withdrawing from the field in favour of the secular ratepayer.
As to the few,—we hope it may prove to be the few,- rate-established schools, we hold that it will be the wish of the great mass of the nation that the Christian Scriptures should be publicly read there, on condition of exempting the insignifi- cant number whose parents would object. To this all Christian denominations will heartily agree, and the small minority cannot expect more than that their children should be per-
mitted to be absent if they wish it. We do not attach any great immediate value even to the reading of the New Testa- ment aloud in a school, apart from the moral effect which may be given to it by the character of the master or mistress. But it is, at least, well that children should not grow up in a Christian land without knowing as much as this, — that if ever in after life they feel the need of a real faith, there is at least what professes to be, and is believed by a very large majority of their fellow-countrymen to be, a true message from the eternal world :—and this, if nothing more, would at least be secured by such public reading. Even the most sceptical parents would usually wish their children to know as much as this. More than this we do not. think could be permitted in rate-founded schools, without raising in a more- pernicious and dangerous form than ever the old passions of the Church-Rate struggle. But thus much of recognition for Christianity the whole nation will certainly desire- for all schools aided by public money whether local or national ; and what is defective in these schools may, we- trust, be supplied by the increased vigour of the schools more- distinctively Christian. Let us never forget, however, that what we want for education is, first of all, an influence hostile- to the immense force of moral heathenism, both in our great cities and rural districts, and that this will depend more on the free scope we give to the highest character of our teachers, than even on their skill in the art of imparting secular- instruction.
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