PARADORTS OF THE EDUCATION CONTROVERSY.
(To TEE EDITOR 01, TILE "SPECTATOR-) Srs.,—A friend has just drawn my attention to an article under the above heading in the Spectator of April 12th in which you animadvert upon views which you suppose to be deducible from a paper which I contributed to this month's Nineteenth Century, and you even go so far as to say: "Arch- deacon Fletcher gives us to understand that the last thing we ought to expect from clergymen is the giving of religious instruction." I am surprised that a paper with the Spec- tator's reputation for intelligence and integrity should make a statement so monstrous and unfounded. The broad duty of "giving religious instruction" is of course recognised by every clergyman, and was not under discussion in the paper referred to. The point under consideration was this, —Should every elementary school be required to open its doors to all manner of religious and irreligious teaching, or should each denominational school teach its own religion only, and each local-authority school give a simple non- denominational kind of Christian instruction? Against the former alternative I had to weigh certain well-known Objections, to some of which you allude, but the strongest of which you leave unmentioned,—viz., that the system has already been tried on a very extensive scale and under most favourable conditions, and that it utterly broke down, with most lamentable results. Finding that these objections, based upon actual experience, were apparently unanswer- able, I had to fall back upon the other alternative, and to conclude "that definite religious instruction such as the English and Roman Churches require, can only be satisfactorily given in schools belonging to the denomi- nation whose tenets are to be imparted; that only one form of religion can be successfully taught in any one school; that each denominational school must teach its own creed; and that the local-authority school must confine its instruction to brow' generalities with which nobody is likely to disagree." I declare the ministers of all denominations to be responsible for the religious teaching of their several schools. For all the million nine hundred thousand children in Church schools I say the clergy are responsible. It is for the sake of giving them Church teaching that we have borne the hardships of the past and are fighting the battle of the present, and I must protest against such misrepresentation of my views as your article conveyed. The Church preaches the Gospel in her own churches, not in the conventicles of others, and if she invites the• children who desire her teaching to receive it in her own schools; she is at least consistent. To provide the necessary amount of school accommodation for her multitudes of children is a duty which she has hitherto nobly struggled to perform in the face of difficulties now likely to be happily removed ; that duty is still incumbent upon her. Let her buy back her surrendered schools, let her build new, till she can collect all her little ones under roofs of her own. Surely this is sounder policy, though it involve labour and sacrifice, than to gain admission on sufferance for our clergy to the Board-schools at the cost of opening our own doors to every variety of teacher who cares to enter.—I am, Sir. &c.,
R. C. FLETCHER.
[We publish Archdeacon Pletcher's letter, but we cannot admit that he either proves us to have misrepresented his paper, or that he does justice to the line of argument contained in the article to which he objects.—ED. Spectator.]
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