Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 74

The Real Crux

The Real Crux.

We will suppose that in a particular school district the householders are unanimously in favour of the Bible, or a particular part or view of the Bible being taught, but the master of the school declines to teach it. Do our clerical friends seriously suppose that the matter will rest there ? Why, if there is anything in this cry of theirs about the godlessness of our system—and I have conceded that there is a good deal—if the omission of religious teaching from a public school is the omission of the most vital part of education, then surely they will be entitled—nay, they will be bound—to do their best to turn "that man out; and his life, which is already sufficiently harassed by his school committee, will be made a burden till he goes. The fighting will be fairer and better worth watching where the householders are not unanimous. Suppose a school committee on which the religious and the irreligious, or the religious page 4 Tweedledums and the religious Tweedledees, are pretty evenly divided; and imagine their adjudicating upon some nice and subtle heresy with which a teacher stands charged by an indignant parent! Do you suppose the hypothesis fantastical ? It is absolutely inevitable if religious teaching is to be subject to the discretion of the teacher, and he is to be subject to the discretion of an elective committee. The State will impose no religious test, but the committees will, and would not be human if they did not. I put this question to anybody who dissents: If you had children attending a school where the master refused to teach the Bible or taught it improperly, and you could not remove your children elsewhere, would you not endeavour to remove the master? If not, why all this clamour about a "godless" education, to which it seems you would rather subject your children than exert yourself to remove the cause of it ?

It seems to me that our secular educational systemand our sacred religion must both suffer grievously by the change—the educational system because conscientious teachers will often lose their places or be engaged in exhausting squabbles with their committees, and pliant teachers will enjoy a preference; religion, because it will be made the subject of constant controversy in utterly unqualified tribunals, which will afford a certain amount of pleasure to all who enjoy a good fight, but unmixed pleasure only to religion's worst enemies.