Elsie Locke, inaugural secretary of the Family Planning Association, member of the Movement Against War ad Fascism in the 1930s (she was also fighting for the rights of women impoverished by the Depression), co-founder of the Christchurch CND, writer who has rescued much real New Zealand history and made it accessible to children, tireless campaigner on environmental matters, wrote the following article for the June/July edition of Parent and Child magazine in 1960. It is reprinted here as the views of one humanist seven years before the establishment of a Humanist Society of New Zealand. Today's Humanist parents face dilemmas similar to those discussed by Elsie Locke, but rarely are they supported by any popular articles that so clearly challenge the supporters of Religion in Schools to acknowledge the rights of the non-religious.
The British type of democracy prides itself on allowing freedom to minorities who dissent from the majority of ruling opinion. We might say that democracy for the dissentients is the only democracy which counts. The man who is in full agreement with the establishment has no need of it: and the establishment which shuts out the voices of even a handful of critics may be shutting out the very voices which it needs to hear.
When religion in schools is being discussed or campaigned for, I often wonder where this cherished principle has been stowed away. Those of us who are non-Christian hardly ever receive a mention - let alone a consideration.
How many of us are there? The latest figures available to me are the 1951 census. Out of 1,939,472 persons, of whom very few declined to give any answer, there were - 5,750 persons of non-Christian religions (Hebrew, Hundu, Confucian, etc): 11,475 persons who declared they had no religion; 9,929 who classified themselves under designations such as athiest, agnostic, free-thinker, rationsalist, humanitarian (The writer would be included here as a humanist).
This avowedly non-Christian section makes up 1.4 per cent of the population. On the other hand few churchmen would be so bold as to claim the remaining 98.6 per cent as consciously Christian. Many people describe themselves as being attached to some denomination because they think it is expected of them, although they would be better designated a Christian. And these would probably have no definite views on religion in education. Assuming that the proportion of non-Christians is evenly distributed among the population, 14 out of every 1,000 schoolchildren will come from non-Christian homes. The parents have the right to claim exemption from instruction in primary schools under the Nelson system; but very few fo them press this right. The following experience will illustrate why.
The parents of a boy moving into Standard I (we will call him John) interviewed his headmaster and asked that he should not attend religious classes. The headmaster was helpful, and personally introduced them to two families similarly concerned, one Jewish, the other atheist. It was arranged that the children would go to school together on Tuesday at 9:30am, that is, at the time when the religious lesson ended. Care was taken in timing their arrival so that they were not loitering in the payground and causing any diversion to the children in school. They entered their classrooms unobtrusively and without comment from their teachers. John actually sat in class alongside one of the Jewish children.
Outwardly all was well, and John expressed no concern whatever. But after half of the first term had passed, a gardener at a nearby park said one day to John's mother, with a twinkle in his eye: "How is John with his bad cold?" "Cold,"said his mother,"he hasn't had a cold." "Oh? But he was playing here last Tuesday and he said he was away from school with a cold,"said the gardener
John's mother pricked up her ears. Tuesday? She went privately to the school and asked the teacher to check the roll. John had been absent on three successive Tuesday mornings.
The conculusion is obvious. The exemption was waived and John attended religious classes with all the other children. A parent would have to be strongly anti-religious (not merely non-religious) to assert his rights in the face of the psychological difficulties forced upon his child.
It may be asked why he should object, in any case, since educationally it is essential to have a knowledge of the Bible and of Christian doctrine. No one will understand his own community or a large part of its philosophy, literature, art and music, if he is ignorant of scripture.
If it were possible to impart this knowledge simply as knowledge probably no one at all would oppose it. The teaching of Christian ethical principles, which are generally accepted by non-Christians, would likewise be fully accepted. But religious education naturally goes further, for religion is not information.
According to the secretary of the Canterbury branch of the New Zealand Council for Christian Education (Mr D J Cooke), in an address to the Canterbury School Committees' Association this year "Religous instruction should also be the imparting of Christian values and the imparting of a belief in God. The school book of services issued by the council includes in its stated objectives: "To help the children to take an intelligent and active part in the act of worship" In brief, children are not merely being instructed, they are being involved.
This involvement goes far beyond the Nelson system. Tiny tots in the primers are taught to sing simple hymns and to say grace before their supervised lunch. School prayers and hymns are part of assembly for intermediate and secondary schools. Anzac Day observances are religious services. Nativity plays are performed. There are dozens of ways in which an acceptance of Christianity is simply taken for granted - and hundreds of opportunities for a teacher who desires to add proselytising to his normal day's work.
Before the Christian reader rises in his wrath and cries. "And why not?" let me repeat - the point at issue is not who has the truth but simply the rights of the non-Christian parent and of his children. Let us condsider the parents first.
The believer in a non-Christian religion (a Jew, a Hundu, etc) will naturally regard Christianity as an erroneous faith and will not want his children indoctrinated in it. The athiest, agnostic or free-thinker, etc, may regard religion at one extreme as dangerous superstition and dogma or at the other as a symbolic expression of human feeling and need, or a staff needed by most people (though not by himself) on life's journey. Usually the non-religious person does fully respect Christianity and Christians as I certainly do myself. This tolerance is extended to all religions. At the same time the non-believer holds that Christianity is philosophically and scientifically untenable, that it is not essential to a good and moral life, that men can live together better without religious barriers, and that our world today (in which Christians are a minority) cries out for wider understanding.
Consequently he will desire his children to be given the same broad and uninhibited pespective, at least until they are old enough to make their own decisions.
Such a parent cannot possibly expect that religious instruction be given without attempted inculcation of faith. Indeed, to bring faith into homes at present not reached by the churches is one of the declared aims of religion in schools. But so long as the instruction is brought to the schools by outsiders, it is relatively easy for the non-religious parent to tell his children that, in his opinion, the stories of the Bible are a blend of ancient history, of myth and legend, and of poetic allegories, all of which have their place in life without being taken as accurate fact. His task would be greatly complicated should scripture ever be included in the ordinary curriculum, taught by class teachers, and delivered with the same authority as mathematics or geography.
Now let us consider the child's angle. No child likes to be an outsider, an oddity. When his class teacher takes advantage of her position to abuse 'athiests' - and this does happen, even now - the son or daugher of known non-Christians has no opportunity to speak in the classroom and perhaps no desire except to be left alone. In the playground he will not be left alone. He will be forced either to deny his parents, or to defend them in views which he does not fully understand and for which he is not reponsible. At secondary school level this situation may be stimulating to character, but in the lower standards it is intolerably unjust. Once again, if scripture were incorporated such happenings would not be occasional but frequent.
My conclusions are simple. There should be no change in the system of religious instruction in our schools. There is a case for the reduction of formal worship and observances conducted by school staff. Education is for the benefit of the children, not of their elders, and the child from a non-Christian home is entitled to respect for his growing personality.
May I add a word to deeply Christian readers who have persisted to this point in sorrow or in anger? We teach our family to try to understand and respect the Christian belief. Is it too much to ask that you should teach your chilren - in your families or in the classes you conduct - to respect non-Christian views, which are held with equal sincerity? We live in a world threatened with disaster - by nuclear war or by shortage of food for growing population -if all nations and creeds cannot learn to get along together. You cannot argue that these problems will be solved by Christianity, for they will not wait until the majority of mankind can be converted to a single religion. Tolerance and understanding of other faiths and philosophies are not merely desirable - they are literally a matter of life and death. Can we not, together, make an effort to set this example?
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