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In approaching the question of providing for religious instruction in school, our discussions must no more run away from the fundamental principles which commend or condemn any element of school work than if we were discussing the introduction of any other of the many subjects which so many well-mentioned or ill-advised people would like to see inserted in the ordinary school curriculum. Last year, at Sherbrooke, this association had up for consideration the question of agriculture as a school study, and some of you may remember that I there enunciated the principle that in the proposed introduction of any new subject, or educational process, the true function of the school, the well defined trend of all legitimate school work should never be lost sight of; and as an emphatic corroboration of the wisdom of your acceptance of this as a first principle, I may encourage you by saying that at the late National Convention of Teachers at Buffalo, that principle was not only enunciated but adhered to throughout the proceedings, much to the enforced diffidence of the faddists, if any of these marvellous people happened to be present. Those who took part in the discussions of that great meeting, seemed to have in their mind more what ought not to form a part of school work, than what might form a part of

An address delivered by Dr. J. M. Harper, at the Teachers' Convention lately held in Montreal.

HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY

school-work; and scant courtesy was given to any suggestion which by any chance seemed to run away from what we are all agreed upon as the true function of the school, namely, the development of the whole being of a boy or girl to the point of being able to take charge of himself or herself, when called upon to assume the responsibilities of life while entering upon any phase of labour or upon the stage of the after self-education.

I think that we, the members of this association, may also take some credit to ourselves that our discussions have not, to any serious extent, run away from this first principle. We have come to be suspicious of the apples of Sodom that the opportunist is ever ready to offer us, for the sake of a little vain-glory in the shape of innovations of the Volapuk or Herbartian kind; and here I have to publicly thank the teachers of my inspectorate for the spirit of cooperation they have always shown in adopting any plan for the improvement of their schools, when once they have come to understand that such a plan sinned against no sonnd pedagogic principle. Through this co-operation, we have been able to approach the elemental laws of child nature in a practical way, and if we have had the preliminary laugh to contend with, as we persevered in introducing and maintaintaing the threee drills as a means to an end, we surely can gain sufficient confidence from what has been done, to face any obstacle that may be thrown in our way while introducing a fourth drill, the most important of all school drills.

After all these years of patient experimenting, it is surely not necessary for any one to tell you from this platform that physical drill is a necessary part of school work, a legitimate school function. And yet it may be necessary to repeat that physical drill is only a legitimate school function when it is kept in its place as a means to an end and not for exhibition purposes. Do I need to tell you that sentence drill is a legitimate school function? Certainly not; but remember that such a drill is only a legitimate school function when it is kept in its place as a means to an end, the end being the training of the child to think correctly by attaining to a correct way of uttering thought original or memorized; and no more need I tell you that religious instruction in school is a necessity, a legitimate school function, as long as you do not forget that it must

also be kept in its place as a a means to an end, the end being the development of the moral nature of the child,the supreme test of all school work, the forming of character.

In searching for a warrant for the introduction of religious instruction into our schools, it will therefore be necessary for us, as teachers, to take higher ground than the parent who desires to have his children receive religious instruction in order that when they grow old they will not depart from the religious denomination to which he wishes them to belong. In a word it is not the function of the school either to make good churchmen or good catholics in the technical sense. Religion has to be taught in school because religion inspires the highest motives, because religious emotions, conscience-born, which have in them no share of the self-interest or worldlymindedness of denominationalism place at the disposal of the teacher the proper means to the nobler end, the activities of a moral drill that will realize the best results in developing the young towards the full maturity of an unprejudiced manhood and a pure womanhood.

Nor is it difficult to make this clear to the teacher even of the least logical turn of mind. If the forming of character, the power to take charge of one's self, be the supreme test of school work, and if this forming of character in its highest and noblest development depends upon the highest motives, and if these highest motives can only be born from the reverence for authority that religion invokes in the soul, the undeniable sequitur is, that since moral training is a legitimate function of the school, religious instruction in school, as the most effectual means towards the highest end of school work, should be had in every school. Some would fain distinguish between morality and religion, whereas the only distinction between the two is that religion is a mere apperception of morality. To repeat, religion inspires the highest motives, and in the moral training of his pupils the conscientious teacher does not desire to cultivate the habit of having less than the highest motives for all that he does. To emphasize this we might go a step further. Religion is not only the strongest influence in provoking ethical motives, in the moulding of human character and the guiding of human conduct, but it has been the strongest of all historic forces.

In proof of this, witness the decay of morals in a nation during the transition from some form of decaying religion to a new or reformed way of giving play to the religious motives. A decline in Greek morals followed the national disrespect towards the tenets of the Greek mythology, just as the same thing happened when the Goddess of Reason was set up in Paris during the French Revolution. The appeal to the moral nature, or to the will by human-born motives is weak when unsupported by religious sanctions and influences. Human-born motives, as history shows, are insufficient barriers to national vice; and human-born motives are insufficient barriers to the milder immoralities of the school-room that finally depreciates the value of the individual in citizenship.

There is therefore nothing for us, as teachers, to do, but to draw into our service these religious sanctions and influences, if we would see the best results follow from a moral drill in school, and just as we have lately been inquiring about the best physical drill to be had, and the best vocal drill, and the best mental drill, with the intention of having them in our schools, so must we proceed to inquire about the best moral drill for our pupils, and forthwith introduce it.

"No boy or girl ever received a religious impression of the least value in the devotional exercise in school." There is the statement of one who affects to know what he is talking about; and we, as teachers, had better look within the scope of our own experiences, to see what measure of truth there is in it. For one, I do not think that the statement should pass unchallenged; because, for one, I do not believe that the statement can be substantiated. I know of a village in which the master was accused of having used the curtailed form of " Our Father which art in heaven, et cetera," when carrying out the letter of the law; and of another where the boys were accustomed to repeat the Lord's Prayer as a final exercise in the afternoon with their caps in hand ready for a rush through the open door of the school-room. I have been at the opening exercises of a school when the beautiful hymn "He maketh up his jewels" was as unmeaning in the mouths of the dear little innocent souls who were singing it, as was the hymn "I want to be an angel" in the mouth of the drunken ne'erdo-well, as he staggered through the streets. These are

exceptional cases, you will say, and so they are; but are they not sufficient to bring us to frown upon everything in the shape of perfunctory religious exercises in school. The regulations of the l'rotestant Committee require that the first part of the school-day shall be devoted to religious exercises, including the reading of scripture, prayer and praise; and to make these exercises effectual, every teacher knows that a previous secular drill must be had, in order that the proper attitude of body, intellect, and soul may be secured when the pupil comes to enter into the presence of God during the short service. As I have said in my hints to the teachers of my inspectorate this year in anticipation of my annual official visit, "Every devotional exercise in school should have a purpose, a serious solemn purpose, and the singing and simultaneous reading should be of the very best." Indeed, unless this proper attitude towards the primary Christian beliefs can be secured by the teacher in his school, the reflex heart-effects in the pupils will not rise above the average effects produced on the souls of a paid choir during the singing of the anthem in church, or on the gay party on the river of an evening with their mixed programme of Hold the Fort," "John Brown's Body" and "Jerusalem the Golden."

To be practical this moral drill in school must deal with the primary religious beliefs; and the first of all these beliefs, the fundamental anthem note of all religion-the ever present supervision of the Most High-must come first in the order of a special training. "Thou God seest "is the first lesson in religion that must be learned in school. The state recognizes God, a parliament opens with prayer, the witness-box still has Him for its shield; and the public school continues to invoke His presence. But how is the school invocation to be made to mean more to the child's soul as a guidance for the day, than the Chaplain's prayer on the floor of the House of Commons, or the kissing of the Book in a court of justice? That is your

problem, teachers, and for me to point out the way this evening would involve the resolving of this association into a Teachers' Institute and the illustration of my suggestions by an actual preliminary drill. Your physical drill is excellent and develops the tissues through activity; but have you ever thought that the best physical drill, the drill that acts upon the whole being, body, mind, and soul,

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