Elementary Education in British Guiana. 109 
curriculum at school. All progress that we make in true education must be 
a gain, but true education does not end, with the attainment of a certain stand- 
ard of literary knowledge, or even of a certain degree of technical aptitude. 
It includes all manner of preparation for life and the worth of any system is 
determined far more by the moral than by the intellectual discipline which it 
imparts.” 
On this principle the various religious denominations have undertaken 
to establish schools in the colony. They desire to have the means of training 
the children, at the same time inculcating Christian principles as the founda- 
tion of moral training. On those principles the whole morality of Europe was 
trained in the past. Modern France, which has excluded religion from the 
schools and tries to teach the children moral principles on the basis of the good 
of Society and Humanity, shows as the result an alarming increase of juvenile 
crime and suicide, and the destruction of family life and patriotism. A similar 
result is noticed by thoughtful observers in the United States. There the 
State is not actively hostile to religious teaching, as in France, but negatively, 
ta xes no notice of any form of religion and subsidises schools for purely secular 
education. The schools there, which receive State aid, are devoted to secular 
subjects alone and no religion whatever is taught. The Catholic Church, which 
has always adhered to the importance of religious training for the young, 
maintains, at great expense a system of parochial schools. In these schools 
there are more than a million and a quarter children. A New York newspaper 
remarked about this ““ The Roman Catholic Church is staggering under a tre- 
mendous burden of expense in order to maintain its parochial schools.” The 
ministers of other denominations are beginning to note the necessity for a 
change. Ataconvention of Baptists, recently held in Vancouver, the Rev. 
Mr. Diarmid, speaking on the Education Question, said that “ State education 
was becoming commercial to an alarming degree. It aimed solely at getting 
on in lfe. The better spiritual purpose of life was entirely left out of it. Was 
that the kind of education, they intended to give their children ? He believed 
that now as never before in the West, there was a necessity for a Christian 
Institute that would save their young people from these materialistic ideals 
and give them a higher purpose in life.” In 1909 the Rev. Frank De Witt 
Talmage, pastor of the Chambers-Wylie Presbyterian Church at Philadelphia, 
said : “ If the years which the child passes before he reaches his twelfth mile- 
“ stone are the most important years of the human life, what are you and I, 
“as parents, doing for the physical and mental and moral and spiritual training 
“of ouc little children? First, how are we caring for the physical bodies of 
“the children, so as to make them healthful animals as God wants them to be ? 
“Tt is a surprising fact to me how a great: intelligent city like Philadelphia will 
* allow its thousands of little children to be born in our congested streets and 
“ sive them no adequate play-grounds, where boys can stretch their legs and 
“ develop their lungs and run and play as they ought to play...... Then, what 
“are we doing for the moral and spiritual lives of our little children? Most 
“of us are willing to confess that our children are not receiving at home the 
“religious training, which they should. How are they to get that training ? 
“In our Sunday schools? Most of the children do not go to Sunday school, 
