PUBLIC SCHOOL RELIGION
By RICHARD VEAGH
OF all educational institutions, the Public Schools have most responsibility towards their pupils. For they provide, during the .greater part of many impressionable years, their whole environment. Now, the uncertainty about religious and moral questions which is so prevalent among young people today begins with many of them long before they have left school. Would not a more liberal religious training than they receive at present prepare them better to face these questions when they enter the larger world ?
With respect to their attitude to religion, the boys in Public Schools may be divided into three classes. The first are those, including most of the younger ones, who unthinkingly accept all they are taught and unthinkingly participate in the ritual. Secondly, there are those—a few of the older and more intelligent—who have heard or read discussions of religious questions and know that there is such a thing as " honest doubt," yet to whom their faith is-still 11one the less real. Lastly, there are those who regard the religious observances which are forced upon them as ceremonies to be tolerated only because of the demands of tradition. and respectability, but to whom religion has no real meaning. Many of these are openly cynical. I will not attempt to estimate the relative numbers in these classes, but know that the third class is large enough to have a serious :influence. That is a very moderate statement of the case: It is this cynicism that is the worst aspect of the whole matter: There grows up an attitude which dismisses religion in toto as fit only for the clergy, old women, and milksops. The school takes no' adequate steps to correct this impression, and an ignorantly materialistic or hedonistic outlook is the result. There is little or no consciousness of spiritual values apart from conventional dogmatic religion.
There are also the masters to be considered. Only wilful blindness 'refuses to realise that more and more among intelligent adults religion is regarded as a subject which must be prepared to face honest and uncompromising criticism. More and more do intelligent adults find the unqualified acceptance of doctrinal Christianity impossible. But can a master in a Public School dare to question the Church's teaching ? Can he be openly agnostic ? What of a man who has clear vision and a profound sense of the importance of a spiritual foundation for education, who has the great and shining gift of intellectual honesty, but who finds himself reluctantly unable to believe what the Church tells him he ought to believe ? Can such a man unreservedly reveal his unorthodoxy, and keep his position ? The painful thing is that it is all too easy for the unthinking and the cynics. I know a school with a staff of fifteen, only four of whom, the oldest members, could genuinely be described as " believers " ; the rest acquiesce, with more or less grumbling (for they are expected to participate), in the daily and weekly religious ritual. What should, if it has any significance at all, be the very innermost core of a man's life, has become for most of them a mockery. One or two see with regret the degradation of noble ideals, and feel a pang at the complacency and dishonesty of a system which compels them to be hypocrites. They know that the feelings of many of the boys are the same as their own. This hypocrisy is not always just a superficial thing forced by circumstances on unwilling victims. At another school of my acquaintance, the Holy Communion is cele- brated once or twice a term by a bishop. On those particular Sundays, masters attend the Celebration who never attend on other occasions ; even men who among their colleagues make no secret of their unbelief. No doubt, similar situations occur at other schools ; circumstances being as they are, it would be too much to expect otherwise of human nature. The bishop's influence is such a very important thing when it comes to looking for a new job, especially a headship ! A testimonial from a bishop is worth having, particularly when he recognises that your spiritual life is as it should be. But what of the influence on the boys of this employ- ment of " religion " for personal ends ? Can we suppose that it escapes their notice ?
Here, then, is the situation. We say to boys : " This is what we believe, and what you are to believe too." Many, not to say most, of the boys know that when we say this we are on the one hand not speaking the truth, and on the other hand asking an impossibility, and what we know to be an impossibility. We offer them orthodox Christianity as the only life of the spirit, and they reject it because some of it seems incredible, or because it is put to them in a way that bores or irritates them, or for both these reasons. Given no alternative foundation on which to build their faith, they are led to feel that no faith is necessary.
What is the remedy ? The advocate of reform will be called an enemy of religion. The charge will be unjust. He may deplore the attitude of mind that dismisses religion as value- less, and at the same time regard as unspeakably stupid a method of presenting religion which inevitably produces atheists and cynics.—What is required most of all is honesty. Masters, from the Headmaster downwards, must be free to admit that dogmatic Christianity is not, and ought not to be, immune from criticism. There must be no taboo on the discussion of religious problems. Any boy who has doubts about religion must be free to express them. We must admit, what most of us feel in our hearts, that our reverence for the ideals of Christianity is independent of belief in its dogma. The opinions of the orthodox and -the unorthodox alike must be open to critical examination. The teachings of non- Christian idealists and philosophers must be reviewed. There is no need to hold formal classes in scepticism. The Sixth Form syllabus in most schools affords opportunities for the discussion of a wide range of " general questions," and a candid consideration of religious problems would find a natural place here, as well as in the " Divinity " lessons which are at present often so unfruitful. A master trained in philosophy and ethics might give valuable help. It is important that men who profess a " scientific " outlook should not suffer from that attitude of mind which may be called a " Huxleyan fixation."
A further reform must be made by the simplification of the daily and weekly services. They should all be very short and very simple. Nearly everyone who has been educated at a Public School remembers the appalling boredom produced by " compulsory chapel." Perhaps it would be best if attendance at the school services were made voluntary, though so far-reaching a reform is probably impracticable at the moment. But it is hard to see what good is done by compelling attendance more than once, even on Sundays. If the Church of England service is in general use, it must be greatly modified. Fifteen or twenty minutes is long enough for any religious ceremony designed for boys. I can see no reason why we should sing the sixty-eighth psalm because it is one of the psalms appointed for the thirteenth day ; nor why we should ever, in schools, sing the Te Deum. Most of our hymns are of such poor quality that one, or perhaps two, would be enough for any one day. The lessons should be confined to the simpler parts of the New Testament and the most interesting parts of the Old. I have heard in a Public School chapel readings from the book of the prophet Amos, and from the more obscure sections of St. Paurs Epistle to the Romans, and have wondered of what possible benefit these could be to the congregation ; even the earlier chapters of Genesis, read as they are without comment, are enough to lead a good many boys to the conclusion that " religion is not true." As to the prayers and sermons, judging by quantity, one would often think that school chaplains had more regard for the sound of their own voices than for anything else.
It would be absurd to imagine that such changes as I have suggested would produce a deterioration of moral character. The moral character of schoolboys (and others) does not depend on religious dogma. On the contrary, they would produce an honesty of mind, a sense of values, and a respect for true religion, that do not exist in most Public Schools today. For those to whom candour means danger I would quote Milton's words : " Who ever knew truth pnt to the worse in a free and open encounter ?
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