EDUCATION.—THE PROSPECTS OF A SETTLEMENT.
T"question whether there shall be a settlement of the education controversy still hangs in the balance, but on the whole the signs seem favourable. At any rate, we have reached a point where both sides know, and the country knows, the conditions on which peace can be had. If this peace is rejected by the extremists of either side, or of both, the nation will understand where to lay the blame. The conditions for a settlement, arrived at between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Government, and already endorsed by moderate Church opinion on the one side and moderate Nonconformist opinion on the other, very closely resemble the five points which the Spectator put forward as a basis of settlement when the Government Bill was first introduced. We may remind our readers that those five points were :- " (1) That teachers in transferred schools should not be for- bidden to give religious instruction on the two days when facilities for denominational education are allowed ; (2) that facilities for denominational teaching should be given to all denominations in all schools ; (3) that Clause IV. should be made mandatory ; (4) that religious instruction, whether denominational or undenominational, should be given in school hours, though subject, of course, to the parent's right of withdrawing his child ; (5) that Voluntary schools, if they so desire, should be allowed to contract themselves out,' and return to the system which prevailed before 1902, when they obtained no rate-aid, but only Government grants."
The draft treaty of peace, now waiting ratification, may be sketched as follows. To speak generally, and subject to the provision for contracting out, all the present Voluntary Church schools are to become Council or Pro- vided schools, and to be administered on the lines upon which Council schools are now administered. In all such schools, however, the local authority is to be obliged to provide simple undenominational religious teaching of the kind which has come to be known as Cowper-Temple instruction, subject, of course, to the Conscience Clause, In this way a complete barrier is placed against the secularisation of the schools and the teachers, and the giving of instruction in the fundamental truths of Christianity to all who desire to receive it is recognised as part of the duty of the State. The State, that is, is not to be degraded to the position of being incapable of dealing with human nature's greatest need in the matter of training the good citizen. Next, the various Churches are to have a right of entry into the State schools in order to give special denominational religious teaching in school hours to children whose parents desire that they should receive it. When demanded by the parents, the local education authority is to have no power to veto such right of entry. Again, teachers, including the existing head-teacher, even in single-school districts, are not to be placed under any statutory disability to give denominational religious instruction if they are desirous so to do. Finally, there is to be a liberal measure of contracting out, under which Roman Catholics, Jews, or High Anglicans, or any other religious bodies, may arrange that their schools shall return to the status quo before the Act of 1902. Such schools are to receive, however, a more liberal grant from the Exchequer than formerly. It will be seen by a comparison of these proposals with the Spectator's five points that, if they were adopted, there would be secured the settlement which we have alvia,ys desired to see secured. Statutory religious disabilities are, speaking generally, not to be created for teachers ; the giving of simple fundamental Christian instruction is to be deemed an essential part of the duty of the State; special denomi- national instruction may be given in all schools in school hours when the parents so desire ; and a liberal system of contracting out is to be established to act as a safety-valve, and prevent the injustice which might otherwise be done to Roman Catholics, Jews, and certain High Anglican organisations.
We pointed out last week that the test of compromise is sacrifice, and that the difficulty is always to get con- cessions from the two parties to a dispute in regard to the essential points. Judged by this standard, the proposed settlement is surely a real one. No one who has made any study of the subject can doubt that the concessions which the Archbishop of Canterbury is prepared to advise the Church to accept, and which he himself accepts, are of a very far-reaching character. If the settlement is adopted, the Church will, except for a few High Anglican schools that may contract out, cease to possess the great network of Voluntary schools which is now hers. Though we believe that the Archbishop is fully justified in the course he has taken, it would be idle to deny that the concession he is asking for is one which may justly be called tremendous. In such a case it is only natural and right that Churchmen should inquire : What do we get in exchange ? They get, to begin with—and this alone would be a complete justifica- tion of their sacrifice—security that the secularisation of our schools and teachers, and of the whole national system of elementary education, shall never be carried out, and that the State shall be bound to concern itself with the religious education of the people. In our opinion, the Church could not possibly do better or more appropriate work for the cause of true religion than this. It is exactly the sacrifice which a national Church should .be prepared to make,—exactly the position which she should be ready to take up. As we have ventured to say on several previous occasions, the duty of the national Church is not to think of her own special interests, material or even doctrinal, but to come forward as the guardian and trustee of the religious side of the life of the nation con- sidered as a whole. It is her business to see that neither the State nor any part of its activities is secularised, and to insist in season and out of season that religion shall still be regarded—to use a more or less technical phrase— as an affair of State. The national Church need not mind giving up the right to have her own way throughout the majority of the schools in the land if by abandoning that position she can secure for all time the recognition of the Christian religimi in all the schools of the State. But the Church by doing this truly national and truly religious work also obtains the right for all the Churches as well as for herself to give, when the parents so desire, special and additional religious teaching. Again, she secures for the other Churches, and for a part of her own body. the right to carry on schools on an exclusive basis, and to maintain in them a particular atmosphere. Here, also, we hold that the Church is performing her true function as guardian and trustee, not only of her own organisation, but of all Churches. Moreover, she stands forth as the champion of the religious element in the nation when she prevents the teachers being placed under religious disabilities.
But though we may think the great sacrifice made by the Church well worth making, and may be convinced that the Archbishop is taking the highest view of his duties and of the duties of the Church over which he presides in asking for it, we do not disguise from ourselves that certain sections of Churchmen will be filled with indignation at what he has done, and will do their best to destroy the projected settlement. Violent and injudicious men who endeavour to monopolise the name of Churchmen, though really they have no true con- ception of the nature of the Church of England—they do not realise that comprehension and true nationalism are of its essence—will, as we see from Lord Halifax's letter, be prepared to go almost any lengths to defeat the policy of the Archbishop of Canterbury. They, it is clear, would rather domineer in rural parishes and single- school districts than secure permanently the teaching of simple fundamental Christianity throughout the land. It is very greatly to be hoped that their narrow, if well-meant, zealotry will be unsuccessful, and that the great body of laymen—who after all have as good a claim to the name of Churchmen as the extremists of the English Church Union—will support the Archbishop of Canterbury in his courageous and statesmanlike willingness to reach a settlement. That they will rally to him is our belief, and we are supported in this belief by the quite admirable letter which so strong a Churchman as Sir Charles Acland contributes to Tuesday's Times. No one can deny Sir Charles's right to the description of a thoroughgoing Churchman, yet in his letter he tells his brother-Churchmen, in language quite as strong as ours, that it is "the clear duty of the national Church to see that all children are religiously brought up, and that her duty is not confined to those that are in ' Church' schools only."
We have dwelt upon the sacrifices which have been made by the Church of England because they concern us most, but this does not prevent us from recognising that the very large body of moderate Nonconformists who are willing to support the settlement are also making no inconsiderable sacrifice. Already many have expressed their willingness to abide by the settlement, and we feel sure that if the rank-and-file of non-political Noncon- formists can be made to realise that what the Church is doing, under the guidance of the Archbishop of Canterbury, is sacrificing her personal rights and interests in order to keep the Bible in the schools, they will recognise the greatness of that sacrifice and be willing to make equivalent concessions. We can, then, join most heartily with Sir Charles Acland when he tells his countrymen who do not belong to the national Church that " a prolongation of the struggle when a settlement is within reach is not creditable to a Christian country, and cannot be beneficial to the interests of the children." What we now need is the expression, both from the rank-and-file of Churchmen and the rank-and-file of Nonconformists, of the opinion that a settlement can and should be made on the lines provisionally agreed on between the Government and the Archbishop of Canterbury. If that expression is strong enough and decided enough, peace is clearly within our reach. And here we may say that the Government must show a certain boldness in their attitude. They must be willing to lead in the good work, and • must not maintain too rigidly the position that their business is merely to give effect to a treaty between two conflicting armies.
Before we leave the subject we desire to return to a point made by us when Mr. Birrell's Education Bill was under discussion. If the Government are wise, they will insert a clause in the new Bill which will make it impossible for the " passive resister," whether Churchman or Non- conformist, to continue in existence. As we pointed out on a previous occasion, it is quite easy to cut away the ground from under the " passive resister's " feet by enacting that the Education-rate, or, if you will, all rates, shall in future be collected in the manner prescribed by the Public Health Act of 1875 rather than under the system which now prevails in the case of the Poor-rate. At present in urban districts distress is the only remedy, but a perfectly adequate one, against those who refuse to pay the Sanitary-rate. All that is wanted, then, is a short clause declaring that rates levied for the purpose of education shall in future be levied in the same manner and under the same conditions as the rates levied under the Public Health Act of 1875.
Previous page
