ethics
6 Oct 2009
Is This The Dumbest Education Policy In Australia?
Every week in NSW schools, thousands of kids sit for an hour doing nothing because of a deal cut a century ago with the church lobby. But now the churches would rather not talk about it, writes David Hollier
It’s not a good time to get a comment from certain church groups in NSW.
Last week it emerged that they were opposing a plan to give kids who don’t go to scripture classes something to do instead. At the moment, an archaic clause in NSW’s Education Act prohibits students who opt out of scripture from being taught anything while others receive religious instruction. At some schools, that means more than half the students are basically doing nothing.
It’s as absurd as it sounds. Responding to growing frustration, The NSW Federation of Parents and Citizens Association (P&C) has funded the St James Centre for Ethics to develop a pilot program to teach ethics to students who don’t want to learn scripture. But the program had barely crossed the Education Minister’s desk before the Government’s religious education advisory panel sounded the alarm. Approving the proposal would require the Parliament to kill that archaic clause, and the churches clearly fear this may be the crest of a very slippery slope.
But if you want to get some kind of detailed defence of the current policy from those church groups represented by the Inter-Church Commission on Religious Education in Schools (ICCOREIS) which advises the Government, you’ll be disappointed, because apparently church spokespeople have gone to ground. When newmatilda.com sought comment from the ICCOREIS, the Catholic Archdiocese and the Anglican Church, none were willing to comment on the issue (and have only put up a very basic defence on their website).
Their reluctance is understandable. Last week the ICCOREIS acting chairman, Reverend Mark Hillis, dismissed the proposal, apparently calling the P&C "a small interest group coming in and ramping things up". That’s the same P&C that represents an enormous number of committed and active families of children in thousands of public schools all over the state. Not surprisingly, his attempt to kill the plan backfired, and now the churches he represents have pulled the blinds.
Actually, one person did get back to me, from the Anglican Church, and said they’d been following the case with interest. "Interest"? I suggested that far from being "followers of the case", they were protagonists in it, and had been for over a century. Apparently I was not speaking to "the right spokesperson". And the right one, not surprisingly, still hasn’t got back to me. That could well be because the bodies involved know they don’t have a leg to stand on.
It’s not clear how much influence the ICCOREIS really has on the Department — certainly Education Minister Verity Firth’s spokesperson wouldn’t comment either way. But the question is: Should they have any say in what non-religious students do or don’t learn?
The NSW Education Department has twice rejected similar ethics programs for schools. In any given week these students can be found in libraries or, in one case described by Helen Walton of the NSW P&C, picking up rubbish.
The current arrangement goes back over a century to when the State took over public education from the Catholic Church. The public of that time was more worried that the State, not the Church, had too much control over education. There were as many approaches to religion in schools as there were colonies.
While the colony of Victoria wanted religion out of schools altogether, NSW was more pious. Its Public Instruction Act of 1880 allowed for it, but stipulated that "not more than one hour" of "general religious teaching" remain. Although a loss for the Church — the previous Act had required "not less than one hour" — religious teaching was built into our state system. While rarely needed at the time, the Act maintained the rights of parents to withhold their children from these classes.
By the 1970s, NSW had become so ethnically diverse — and increasingly atheistic — that many students were either opting out of Scripture or finding it denominationally exclusive. This pressured the government into reviewing the role of religion in education. The Rawlinson Committee’s 1980 review responded to a complex mix of community desires. Some wanted "Special Religious Education" (SRE), which is denomination specific and includes worship. Others desired "general" instruction about the history and concepts of religions. Some wanted both, and others neither.
While Rawlinson’s report recognised the limitations of SRE in a multi-ethnic society, it endorsed its continued presence in state schools. The report recommended "that pupils withdrawn from SRE be provided with opportunities for purposeful secular learning." But the state government was in the thrall of you know who, and kept the Act intact, prohibiting secular learning.
The outcry against this prohibition has gradually become louder. In 2003, the St James Ethics Centre approached then-premier Bob Carr proposing an ethics-based course for primary school students. The then-minister for education Andrew Refshauge rejected the proposal claiming it lacked public support.
Sensing the minister had misread the community, the P&C Association surveyed parents to discover their attitudes towards such programs. It revealed a strong majority (59 per cent) who thought their kids should have the option of a non-religious ethics class. An even higher proportion supported exposing students to faiths other than their own. Again the proposal was submitted and again rejected, this time by Carmel Tebbutt.
In 2004, one group of parents and students in Bungendore, just outside Canberra, decided to take matters into their own hands. They organised a volunteer program of supervision for a course on World Religions. The program came to the Department’s attention when a parent wrote a letter about its success to the Sydney Morning Herald. In 2006, without any consultation, the Department shut it down.
One of the Bungendore parents behind the program, Allan Donnelly, still believes their program was in line with the Act. "It met the recommendations of the Rawlinson Committee, did not create a ‘conflict of choice’ as proscribed in the Act, and followed exactly the same format under the same criteria as the faith-based groups," he said. "We want the same opportunity as the faith-based groups."
Howard Packer, a Sydney barrister, is president of the P&C at Rozelle Public, one of seven schools that have volunteered to trial the program developed by the St James Centre for Ethics. An active member of the Uniting Church (which supports the program), he sees the issue as one of social justice.
Packer describes the churches’ opposition as a "knee-jerk, paranoid reaction to anyone treading on what they regard as their territory. It’s strange that they would rather children get nothing than talk about values."
Packer says the Church Commission should stop worrying. "Rather than stealing students from the religious classes, the interest in ethics would inspire some students to get more involved in religion."
And what if the State Government refuses permission to trial the program? "If approval isn’t given, we’ll lick our wounds. But it’s not an issue that’s going to go away. There is strong community support for this."
Some church representatives have been quick to raise fears about the ethics pilot. Who will teach these classes? How will the teachers be selected? Who will select them? Who will scrutinise what they teach? I put these to P&C Association spokeswoman Helen Walton, who explained that "the process for ethics classes will be identical to that used to establish scripture classes." As envisaged by the P&C, the classes will be voluntary and, rather than oppose the existing religious classes, they would run as a complementary alternative. Students would be free to continue doing nothing, to attend religious classes or even to move back and forward between the ethics program and the existing religion classes.
What the opposition from church groups truly reveals is a distinct lack of faith in their own product. They’re worried that, given the option, students will drift away from scripture towards programs presenting ethics in a secular context. Instead of relying on their message to sell itself, these church groups seem to put more faith in using political influence to maintain the place they still enjoy in the school system.
So what are the prospects for the St James Ethics program actually getting up? The NSW ALP’s track record of doing everything it can to avoid doing anything at all doesn’t bode well. On the other hand, it seems pretty clear that apart from the Government’s own colossal policy inertia there is no credible community resistance to this program. The long silence from the churches looks very much like an admission that they’re fighting a policy that even they can’t argue against convincingly.
Getting kids talking about ethics instead of sitting idle? How can you argue with that?
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Posted Tuesday, 06 October 09 at 11:58PM
And our first lesson today as part of the new curriculum, kiddies, is all about ‘The ethics of control’. Take it away, Father Away.
But seriously, yes it is incredibly dumb. This is less useful than the law (still in use, if I’m not mistaken) that a man with a flag has to walk in front of cars to warn pedestrians of danger.
To quote one of my favourite bumper stickers:
‘Lord, protect me from your followers’.
Posted Wednesday, 07 October 09 at 8:53AM
Teaching ethics would great, not just for the kids but for the community. It may help over ride some of the bad that is being done with kids of all ages watching tele, in the process being “taught” the difference between right and wrong by reality TV and the like. I’d like my children to be involved in ethics education (but only if they want to).
Be the change you want to see
www.adambutler.com.au
Posted Wednesday, 07 October 09 at 9:24AM
As an athiest, and a strongly morally comitted person, this issue makes me really angry. I regard religion as often ammounting to “anti-ethics”, it that it encounages moral submission, not moral thought. Kids to need to learn to think about right and wrong in a critical and constructive way (so do most adults, IMHO). Still I worry that this might turn into lessons in “values” (who’s values?), rather than in ethics (which is about developing your own values).
I also note that the St. James centre is a Christian (Anglican) organisation: http://www.ethics.org.au/about-us/ethics-centre-history.html I had to sit through C-of-E scripture as a kid (including one very interesting hour long “the world was created in 7 days, and Darwin is the Devil” rant at Hunters Hill Public), and I’m not sure that C-of-E “ethics” would be a great improvement.
“World religions” is a great idea. Teach the kinds about Zeus, Ganesha, etc. -that at least will give them a proper perspective on religion.
Posted Wednesday, 07 October 09 at 9:38AM
After a year of scripture in Year 1 my son decided he didn’t want to attend scripture classes in Year 2. I discussed this with the principal who assured me that there would be a learning program set by his normal class teacher, so that the time in non-scripture classes would be well spent.No such program was devised. He was given colouring-in and such time-wasting activities to do. I wrote a letter (via email) to the minister suggesting that students not attending scripture classes were being discriminated against as there was no formal program for them. I did not even receive acknowledgement, let alone a reply. After a month or so I sent this letter to my local (Labor) member and asked him if he could get some attention. Two months later I still not had received a reply other than a request for my postal address. After a less friendly email to my local member I was posted the minister’s reply from the local member’s office. The reply was not even addressed to me, but to the local member. I was referred to in the third person. The reply was patronising and I felt I was being spoken down to, even though I had made it clear that I was once a NSW education teacher. At no point in the spin-ridden reply was there reference to my concern about perceived discrimination experienced by non-scripture students. So for Verity Firth!
Posted Wednesday, 07 October 09 at 11:14AM
I wish this kind of alternative was available when I was in High School. My brother opted out of scripture from Year 2 onwards because his scripture teacher told him that dinosaurs never existed.
So clearly the vetting process for scripture teachers is brilliant. That gem aside, it is often seen as punishment for the students. Those who attend scripture are often bribed with chocolate and lollies, so those who have study period are left out.
Posted Wednesday, 07 October 09 at 11:37AM
Forget religion and ethics, this spare hour should be used to teach more science and/or history
Posted Wednesday, 07 October 09 at 2:42PM
This is a dumb education policy but it sure as hell isn’t the dumbest.
Building the education revolution anyone? Where many already luxuriously resourced schools get even more public money while many run down comprehensive state high schools get a Covered Outdoor Learning Centre (that’s a classroom without walls or a carport for poor kids). Air-conditioning which so many of them need, particularly if their results are to be compared with kids who are tested in airconditioned ( or adequately heated) classrooms, was expressly forbidden by the BER.
Or the “transparency” agenda, where schools have to publish their results and be compared with “like” schools - but where - as has just been revealed - details of the financial and resource base of each compared school will not be equally transparent - although that was originally promised. In fact, we won’t know what the comparable resources are - yet another incidence of kick the poor schools and protect the richer ones.
Or the centralisation of all school purchasing through the DEPT ( at least in NSW)?
Or the laptops that many public schools didn’t have the wiring to run or the staff to support?
Take your pick.
Posted Wednesday, 07 October 09 at 4:17PM
Asti
Thanks Jane for your spirited defence of public education. The religions aren’t satisfied with picking both the state and federal public purses to support their religious schools. They have to intrude on the state school curriculum time as well. When the state government entered into agreements with the churches to take over education and fund public education, there was no agreement that the continuing church schools would receive very substantial public funding. That is, the state paid for public education, and the churches paid for the schools they ran. Since then, they have had inserted their hands into the public purse, and taken out more and more. All at the expense of public education.
Their school halls, swimming pools, new science laboratories, computers, sport ovals and libraries, school owned buses, marketing personnel and groomed grounds are at the cost of pretty basic infrastructure and quality for public schools. Australia is in the ridiculous position that public education may well become the education of last resort. It should be a melting pot of children from different ethnic, economic, cultural, religious, and educational backgrounds. It should be the place where all Australian children mix and get to know and appreciate their diversity and their humanity. Instead….well, as an example, a couple of years ago I was invited into a mosque to attend a service. First I was shown around the Muslim kindergarten, the Muslim primary school, and the Muslim high school. During the service, there was discussion among the men below about how to set up a Muslim university. What chance do those children ever have of getting to know children from other backgrounds? And of, course, other religions in Australia have already achieved this cradle to adulthood utopia. Heaven forbid that OUR children should be exposed to other influences, other thought, other…..children!
Now we have in Verity Firth education minister who is conspicuous by her absence, by the total control her department has over her. Where on Earth is Verity Firth? Not making any courageous decisions or doing any independent thinking, that’s for sure. She doesn’t have it in her to support the P& C proposal.
So my grandson, who is in his first year at a public primary school, will have to continue with his one hour of Buddhist religious instruction as it’s the closest thing his school is allowed to offer to a class on ethics or comparative religion. However, the school has no hall, no oval, no dedicated library, not one spare classroom, no covered assembly/lunch area…..etc etc Oh, and the support he needs for his diagnosed multiple learning difficulties won’t be available either, and the NSW Government tries to pretend that such support isn’t needed directly by the student - all that’s needed is district coordinators rather than specialist teachers. He’s fortunate that he has a fantastic teacher, and that as he progresses in the school he will have other great public education teachers.
Posted Wednesday, 07 October 09 at 4:56PM
Australia is a secular society. So why have religious instructions in the first place? It should be confined to Sunday School or to private schools (not funded by taxpayers).
Perhaps this one valuable hour could be used to teach children about the folly of religions as part of a history lesson.
Or it could be used to teach children humanitarian values and ethics rather than brainwashing their brains with false morals.
Posted Wednesday, 07 October 09 at 5:18PM
Jane Caro has made a great point. A brick and mortar education revolution that does not improve contact hours, learning support, language programmes, social supports, teachers aide (STLA) permanency and conditions, special needs education resources or enhance quality is totally off track.
There is an education devolution going on. We (taxpayers) are still paying for the ovals at Knox and Kings.
But private schools can be selective, irrespective of the creed they espouse.
We take our son to private tutors at our own expense in that hour each week … and a great many others after school. If I didn’t, he couldn’t cope in the mainstream.
Fact is, we pay more for my son’s education than if he was at a boarder Kings. And he is a day boy in a public school without equal educational opportunity.
Ethics are important and a welcome addition to the curriculum. Wasting our children’s time and potential is unethical.
It is also uneconomic. Every dollar spent now saves a hundred public dollars in adulthood. (Knapp et al, The True Cost of Autism, London School of Economics, 2004).
Posted Wednesday, 07 October 09 at 6:49PM
After coming home from school terrified by stories of hellfire and brimstone and petrified I was going to hell my mother wrote the obligatory note requesting that I be exempted from religion. As a kid I thought it was great that I got to sit in the library with other comdemned children essentially doing nothing. I figured this was because the school couldn’t be bothered arranging anything else for us to do. I am now gobsmacked to learn they are actually not allowed to find any other activities for us. I had to check the calendar to make sure it wasn’t April Fool’s Day because I truly can’t believe that this is for real.
I’m not against religion being taught in school but ALL religions should be taught from an historical and social science perspective. Religion should not be single faith based with a motive of recruiting and brainwashing a new generation of converts.
Posted Wednesday, 07 October 09 at 7:34PM
Presumably the churches don’t want the students doing something in that hour, because it may be something they enjoy. Like doing nothing won’t be?
Posted Thursday, 08 October 09 at 1:26AM
Welcome to the spiteful world of the religious liar & political stranglehold over ‘the children’. They know dam well that their “product” is not viable & to exaggerate the method of dictatorship to which it, or, it’s equivalent should be taught is an extremity. One has to realize that the children are saying they don’t want to learn about the religious past & it would be better to teach them about Darwin’s theory of Evolution. Combined with socialization theory, has all the learning needs. In fact, Richard Dawkins is or was fighting to have it introduced into the British education system as a alternative to religious education.
Posted Thursday, 08 October 09 at 8:55AM
Quoting from the article:
“Some church representatives have been quick to raise fears about the ethics pilot. Who will teach these classes? How will the teachers be select? Who will select them? Who will scrutinise what they teach?”
My response? Non of their business. Simple and clear. The church(s) do (should not) not have a place in public schools.
Posted Thursday, 08 October 09 at 12:58PM
Surely with responsible parenting and the guidance of NSW’s abundant religious institutions we can ensure that the fear of God is thoroughly nailed *ahem*, I mean drilled into the minds of our malleable youngsters without our public schools getting involved.
Lets put aside for a minute that NSW’s public schools are still adhering to a thoroughly antiquated law that insists that the feckless heathens who choose not to participate in scripture classes shall be taught nothing at all for the hour - lest their minds be distracted from the glory of the savior who died for their sins but who they chose to ignore anyway… and consider the logic of this situation.
It is certainly ironic that the religious leaders who claim to be in possession of strong Christian moral values would rather those children who opt out of scripture classes “receive nothing than talk about values.”
Here’s an idea, instead of scripture classes or ethics classes, or picking up rubbish/illegal child labour - how about public schools devote an hour a week to teaching children proper logic?
You can read more about my plan to fill the minds of Australia’s future with good old-fashioned Aussie common sense here:
http://anirritatingtruth.blogspot.com/2009/10/wont-somebody-please-think…
Posted Thursday, 08 October 09 at 5:37PM
Like I said in another comment, freedom of religion is based on the rights to choose. Granted, I am not a Muslim, but does that mean I have the obligation to eat as much as humanly possible every day during Ramadam? I am not a Buddhist, either, but does that mean now I have the obligation to shoot as many living creatures as I can find with a machine gun? Likewise, what is the valid reason for having children to choose between a scripture class and a substitute lesson, as though there was something that one had to practice as opposed to a religion or that there were forgone opportunities stipulated when you practice one? If the kids have to stay at school during that one hour, then that’s fine for me as long as they observe all the rules that every other pupil must also follow. We, as adults, don’t do something simply because some other people are practicing their religions, but, still, we are expected to obey all the laws that governs every other Joe Doe in the community even when we are chomping away at the local McDonald’s regardless of what some Hindu have to say about beef. Likewise, why should children be introduced to a principle that is otherwise outlandish - if not utterly ridiculous - to a civilized, well-educated individual when equal opportunity for all was good enough a lesson in itself already? If there are expenses in that one hour, then consider it money well-spent - it’s good for the kids.
Then again, it’s probably a better idea not to have a scripture class to begin with, but we aren’t exactly in a perfect world, are we?
Posted Thursday, 08 October 09 at 11:34PM
I think the author means complementary, not complimentary, alternative.
Whether complementary or complimentary though it all sounds like a lame duck. Ethics? Whose ethics? What ethics? Without God where do you derive ethics from anyway?
Although I haven’t been to church in 15 years, I can well understand why the churches would be against such a scheme. Churches teach the path to salvation and the moral implications of such a path. Their ethics, whether you like them or not, have a clear moral source.
The post-christian secular appropriation of ethics casts a cruel net that stretches wide and far, and won’t let go; trying to include everyone and offend no one, but with everyone ending up feeling excluded or offended or both, seeing as it gets its source from nothing but populist sentiment, ie, all about what I want, respecting my rights: not how I should respect you.
It might be a good idea if such a program were run as a critical theories of ethics course. (Sarcasm alert.) Bring some philosophy into the schools. Get some teachers qualified to teach philosophy. But if it’s just going to be a lame “secular humanist” moralistic mirror of the religious classes then what’s the point.
Abject moralism, whether humanistic or religious, just leads to a slave society. Nietzsche had it totally right there. The death of God leads to absolute despair requiring a radical transvaluation of all values as its logical outcome, not just some woolly ‘do good to others because you’ll feel good too :-))’ sentiment which is what seems to pass as ‘ethics’ these days.
But my guess is the proposed ethics program would be just an excuse to tell kids, this is right that is wrong don’t ask questions, without mentioning that bad, bad three letter word. No wonder the Churches are worried about their territory being trodden upon.
http://zielwolf.blogspot.com
Posted Thursday, 08 October 09 at 11:49PM
I’d like to add that in any case our modern Churches’ idea of ethics are all misguided in any case.
Jesus’s most quoted ethical commands were not in fact exhorting, they were predictive.
He didn’t say “do good to others”. He said “Do unto others as you would have them do to you.”
He didn’t just say “love your neighbour”. He said “Love the Lord your God…and love your neighbour as yourself.”
If you kill of God, then go do bad stuff to yourself, and you don’t love yourself then what happens? Our modern world is what happens.
Go figure.
http://zielwolf.blogspot.com
Posted Friday, 09 October 09 at 1:36AM
What a poor piece of journalism.
Having failed to make direct conyact with primary sources we are served up this concocted conclusion.
“What the opposition from church groups truly reveals is a distinct lack of faith in their own product. They’re worried that, given the option, students will drift away from scripture towards programs presenting ethics in a secular context. Instead of relying on their message to sell itself, these church groups seem to put more faith in using political influence to maintain the place they still enjoy in the school system.”
The qusetion is why hasn’t the Minister acceded to the wishes of the P and C Association. A little political activism outside electoral offices might help and large Billboards on election days to inform the general public.
Posted Friday, 09 October 09 at 1:38AM
I don’t really mind some people prefer for religious education. But to include all kids from different religious backgrounds, I don’t think a particular religious ethics would be a good idea.
I believe ethics and understanding of ethics are important for kids to develop their mentality with and grow with. The reason is to make a good society - a working society. Without understanding of the needs of ethics, a society will become wild and the selfishness of individuals will destroy the harmony and peace will be taken out of the society.
As a particular religion will not work for all, Australia should look at its own laws, codes of ethic, constitutions and the reasons or philosophy behind them. The reason for these is all Australians or whoever living in Australia should abide by them.
The kids wouldn’t need any reasons when they are too young. They only need to be told what not to do - or what are not good to do. But when they get a bit older, they would or should seek basic reasons behind these what not good to do and what good to do.
I’m sure the parents are educating their kids with ethics from their lifestyle. But that doesn’t emphasize the common ground. I don’t mean the educations from the parents are not good or not good enough. But not all kids have opportunities for such educations. Hence, the common education systems need ethic classes.
Posted Friday, 09 October 09 at 2:13AM
“The post-christian secular appropriation of ethics”, ziewolf? As in that which followed the Judeo-Christian appropriation of ethics? Religion appropriates ethics from people, not the other way around.
Ethics are human values, not religious values.
Posted Friday, 09 October 09 at 6:59AM
Zielwolf, the person called jesus said do unto others as you would have them do unto you, not ‘do to you’ & it was the church that quoted love thy God crap because it supports their business of religion.
Earnestlee is right & the issue is about the governments inability to govern, due to the influence of the religious domination of politics & the politicians personal religious beliefs which enforces punishment by isolation of the child & not allowing them to participate in anything because it’s not scripture.
Posted Friday, 09 October 09 at 6:44PM
Religion, of the hellfire Baptist variety filled me with fear, guilt, shame and self loathing as a child. Children do not know they are trying to live up to impossible standards that most adults in their church never approach, and feel like guilty failures when they don’t.
There is no place for religion in a seat of LEARNING.
Posted Saturday, 10 October 09 at 2:37PM
According to wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Australia Australia is essentially a judeo-christian nation.
New Australian citizens who are asked to pass a stupidity test can tell you that Australia’s values are based on judeo-christian tradition or they could fail the citizenship test
(see http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21752187-2,00.html )
A secular minority which would see the taxation of the entire Australian working population to force upon us all an education system based on the whims of that secular minority seems somehow unethical and undemocratic.
But then, throughout history, mankind has always viewed “secular ethics” as nothing more than a contradiction of terms.
Posted Saturday, 10 October 09 at 6:07PM
Can you elaborate on the context by what you actually mean with all that Rockjaw? I’m well aware of Judea-Christianity but what secular minority are you referring to?
Posted Saturday, 10 October 09 at 6:37PM
Rockjaw —
Oh, well then, if Wikipedia and News Ltd say so, it must be true. And what a solid argument indeed for public schools continuing to permit the religious indoctrination of children, let alone continuing to condemn conscientious objectors and non-believers to mundane inactivity for the duration. Ethical much?
Throughout history, religion has viewed “secular ethics” as nothing more than a contradiction of terms, and has sought to defame, punish, marginalise, belittle and slur anyone who dares say otherwise. Accordingly, your knee-jerk ridicule of secularism gives a good indication of which mast (dare i say, cross) of unreason your colours are nailed to. That’s your choice, of course, but just stop the “benevolent” lies to children and stop imposing what is, in effect, a mandatory detention upon those with the good sense or wise parentage to be excused in the first place.
Posted Sunday, 11 October 09 at 1:12AM
Bren
Try not to foam too much at the mouth.
As your outburst so clearly seeks to ridicule, defame, punish, slur etc, so too do you demonstrate, quite successfully, how these are in fact secular and not religious values.
And as our education system slowly succumbs to these values so too have our standards of education slipped to the levels where we find them today.
If we were to apply any of the good sense or wise parentage which you refer to in your outburst we would perhaps observe how the vast majority of Australians are in fact not secular but religious, and more specifically, christian.
We would be wise to apply that level of common sense to return our education system to reflect those beliefs and traditions which are typical of the vast majority of all Australians rather than to pursue these failed attempts to force us all into your proposed and failed secular ideologies which are obviously not shared by the overwhelming majority of Australians.
Posted Sunday, 11 October 09 at 3:12AM
Rockjaw —
Try not to whine too much about plain speaking. Honesty can be shocking, I grant you. Especially to anyone predisposed to organised delusion.
As your theo-supremacist rant (thinly veiled as a crude demand for majoritarian democracy) clearly fails to substantiate, but rather amplifies, your earlier slur upon the non-religious AND ostensibly defends an anachronistic policy which treats youth like mushrooms (via two equally perverse methods that metaphorically keeping them in the dark and feeding them sh..), so do you demonstrate, quite successfully, the tiresome inclination of religious adherents to attack critical inquiry and subdue reason whenever it thinks its numbers “entitle” it to do so. More of your “ethics”, I suppose?
Quelle surprise, we appear to have a different understanding of “good sense”. For good sense tells me that Australia is constitutionally secular and culturally less and less Christian. It follows good sense that one ought not not presume that one speaks on behalf of 64% of the population just because one happens to shares a 9-letter denominational label with them on the census.
But by all means, please do feel free to rationally explain why the “Inter-Church Commission on Religious Education in Schools” should have any say in what non-religious students do or don’t learn?
Posted Sunday, 11 October 09 at 3:29AM
Whilst your attending to what Bren just said to you Rockjaw, you can also explain exactly what common sense values you are referring to that the religious order have in the education system.
Posted Sunday, 11 October 09 at 2:47PM
Bren,
You really do dislike the fact that Australia’s majority identifies itself as part of at least one religious faith and so you present the rather weak argument that we have constitutionally separated church from state.
It may relieve your frustration to learn that constitutional separation of state from religion in Australia has nothing to do with Australia’s religious majority. That separation has to do with tolerance, respect and recognition of the rights of the individual citizen.
Perhaps you have been unfortunate enough to have been force fed a secular education and are therefore less qualified to understand how the seperation of church from State has come about for exactly the same reasons we have three autonomous and independent branches of government? None of these reasons have anything whatsoever to do with our system of education.
Nazi Germany was a secular state with a secular system of education. Nazis produced some of the world’s most accomplished murderers who graduated side by side with some of the world’s greatest engineers.
Stalin’s Russia was a secular state. Mussolini ruled a secular state. Their education systems were not worth much either.
Forget about “other” constitutional systems. Think about this Bren, South Africa’s Verwoerd managed to legally create an apartheid state from precisely the same political secular consitutional canvas as Australia’s and which was presented to him by exactly the same British Westminster system of government which we have adopted in Australia.
The apartheid system of government was a secular system opposed by every faith based religion in that country. It was the faith based schools, and in particular the catholic and jewish schools, and not the secular majority of that country, which courageously and doggedly faced off against the secular state and its secular education system which they forcibly imposed on that country.
Perhaps, if these secular states enjoyed Australia’s religious majority, the world may have been spared the many genocides and many millions of murders committed by the many infamous secular states.
Just like Nazi Germany, or Stalin’s Russia, or apartheid South Africa, the secular minority of Australia would love nothing more than to bring about a centralised autocratic socialist and totalitarian system of centralised education for the better political indoctrination of our children. A system to closely resemble the system which you propose should be forced down the throats of all Australians.
Another thing Bren, and I know this is very difficult for you to grasp, but whether support for religion is waxing or waning in Australia is irrelevant to the fact that the majority of Australia still values their many freedoms, including their freedom to worship anything their free hearts or “misguided minds” desire.
To use your own language, Australians are free to believe any “sh..” they bloody well like.
But this is what frustrates you the most isn’t it Bren? Freedom.
Why does it annoy you Bren? Is it annoying that Australians can wear what they like, say what they like, think what they like and believe any bloody thing their misguided minds bloody well like without fear of persecution from the likes of our fundamentalist secular minority?
Get over it Bren, Australians enjoy political and religious freedom and will continue to do so for as long they bloody well like.
You are wrong on another issue too Bren. Despite your obvious dislike of democratic values, it does remain relevant that an overwhelming majority of Australians identify with a formal religion.
Why does it anger you that Australians still do prefer their nation to follow the will of the majority? Or that our current system seeks to reserve respect for Australia’s minorities, including, by the way, that same small secular minority which hates Australia’s religious majority so much?
Australians may eventually succumb to a centralised socialist and secular uber-government intolerant of the rights of our minorities with a matching education system devoid of choice.
We may finally even destroy the rights of our individual citizens to do or say or to think anything they want, but Bren, sadly for you mate, that time has not yet arrived.
Get used to it Bren, Australians will not succumb to any model of totalitarian education, it is simply not in Australia’s rebelious or religious nature.
Posted Monday, 12 October 09 at 2:21AM
Rockjaw —
S116 of the Australian Constitution says “The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth”. I call this constitutional secularism. I did not and would not call it a separation of church and state. Nor did the High Court in the 1981 Defense of Government Schools case (“15. … [S116] cannot readily be viewed as the repository of some broad statement of principle concerning the separation of church and state”) although the Court did note argument of such a movement by the colonies prior to Federation (“12. … in the latter part of the nineteenth century, there occurred a move towards complete separation of church and state, with the abolition of all financial aid to churches and to church schools”).
As for your continued denigration of the unreligious — which, in painting secularism & separation as invalid, shows their importance — despots are despots regardless of secularism not because of it. Sorry to further disappoint you, but I have no concern about people holding lawful private beliefs of their genuine voluntary choosing. I do value democracy but believe it should be more than two wolves and a sheep deciding what’s on the dinner menu. And try as you might, your scurrilous red herrings cannot blot out the simple relevant observation that religious lobbyists dictating what alternatives to Scripture class should be available for unreligious students is an egregious and unreasonable conflict of private religious interest over public interest.
Your irrelevant ad hominem about me and selective scaremongering about secularism as the slippery slope to totalitarianism shows your failure to grasp, or deliberate intention to elude, this simple latter point, even when many moderate reasonable religious folk “get it”. It also shows you cannot answer a simple question and will go to extreme lengths to avoid doing so.
Thus I’ll ask again. Why should the “Inter-Church Commission on Religious Education in Schools” have any say in what non-religious students do or don’t learn? You preach the language of choice but seem to support a policy of mandatory non-choice for unreligious students and their parents. Why?
Posted Monday, 12 October 09 at 8:21AM
I found this discussion on early hours last night, sent to me by a fellow Humanist. It’s on education of scripture, everything were discussing here in fact. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/lifematters/stories/2009/2697679.htm It might be educational for you Rockjaw. It’s a podcast.
Posted Monday, 12 October 09 at 6:12PM
Bren,
By means of an important contradiction in your argument you have managed to present my point extremely well.
Your observe that private interests should not be seen as more important than the public interest. In a free society this is wrong.
You also justifiably observe that democracy should be more than two wolves and one sheep deciding what is on the dinner menu.
The problem with your argument is that these analogies are contradictory and irreconcilable.
The most obvious reason for this is that they fail to explain the potential outcome of a population of two wolves and one sheep where it may easily be argued that the consumption of mutton is in the public interest. Can it be argued that the consumption of grass is in the public interest? Will these decisions be teh result of policy of the ballot box?
As a free society the answer is simple, we should not be making any laws pertaining to food in the first place and the rights of each member should be protected ahead of any public interest, public policy or ballot box.
Whether a religious or secular system of instruction is a public or private interest has obvious similarities, but are we really forced to make a choice? Why can both systems not coexist in peace and decisions left to each individual to decide for herself?
Public interest as an argument for any specific policy is a sugar coated pill which is frequently used to force unpopular ideas or hidden agendas on an unwilling majority.
In order for your one sheep to survive it becomes obvious that the public interest must be made secondary to private interest. This is where you have contradicted yourself.
The only way in which the sheep and the wolves could all survive as equal participants is under a system in which private interests are protected ahead of public interest.
By extension, therefore, if each and every individual right is protected ahead of “the public interest”, only then may it be argued that the public interest is served because the public is, after all, nothing more than the sum of all the individuals members of public.
Not only that, but no society may claim to be free unless the rights of the individual are fully guaranteed and protected.
S116 of the constitution is irrelevant to that debate but it is relevant to the debate of whether or not religious instruction may or may not be regulated by the legislative branch of government.
Whichever system of education is deployed, it must equally guarantee the rights of the religious and the secular or it can not be deemed to meet the minimum requirements of a modern free or democratic society.
S116 does not preclude parliament from enacting legislation which protects these fundamental rights, not even where they pertain to the protection of religious groups and it certainly does not restrict parliament to enact legislation which is exclusively secular as your argument seems to suggest.
Parliament does, therefore, possess the authority to enact legislation for the protection of the rights of both groups, but it does not have the authority to prohibit or to force either belief on any citizen.
Posted Tuesday, 13 October 09 at 4:20AM
Thanks for the link Atheist.
Posted Thursday, 15 October 09 at 2:08PM
Wow, what a discussion. Aren’t we lucky.
While I am in complete support of teaching ethics, critical thinking and world religions to children, I’d like to share my own story of wagging RE in primary school.
As a secular Jewish kid in a great little outer-suburban public school in Melbourne in the late eighties, I wasn’t interested in Jesus stories particularly. So I wagged.
My friend Sascha and I would hide in the bush at the back of the school and make cubby houses, devise complicated time-travelling games, draw elaborate comic books, and write terrible pop songs. We had a ball. Unfortunately we couldn’t go to the library where we really wanted to go, for fear of being busted.
Point being, one hour a week where we did what we wanted, made our own fun, and were responsible for ourselves (and felt special and envied for not having to go through the by-all-accounts dead boring RE class where they only seemed to colour in Disneyesque pictures of Jesus) was liberating and memorable.
I’m not advocating wagging necessarily, but I warn against the assumption that kids are incapable of being autodidactic when they get a bit of unstructured time to themselves.
peace, kids.
Posted Friday, 16 October 09 at 10:52AM
Rockjaw —
So kind of you, the soul of charity even, to take the time and effort to reveal that two isolated comments of mine “failed” to explain something to you that they were not intended to explain. What a wonderfully tangential and diversionary tract, quite neatly ignoring the substance of my comments and the article topic.
So I’ll simply get to the point, again:
Why should the “Inter-Church Commission on Religious Education in Schools” have any say in what non-religious students do or don’t learn?
You preach the language of choice but seem to support a policy of mandatory non-choice for unreligious students and their parents. Why?
Posted Sunday, 18 October 09 at 2:10AM
The simple answer to that question is: - they don’t have a say, that issue is regulated by a secular law enacted by a secular legislative which prohibits students from being taught anything else when they opt out of religious instruction classes.
The religious, being mostly good at accepting guilt, are saddled with the blame.
Posted Monday, 19 October 09 at 2:06PM
Rockjaw —
An evasive and barely cogent half answer.
The ICCRES have had a say. For a continued policy of state-endorsed inculcation of untruth and discrimination against unreligious students. Which came about via a dodgy deal a long time ago when governments first got into the business of running schools and has been preserved ever since due to political concern for the religionist vote. These are the usual tactics from usual suspects in pursuit of the usual religionist agenda.
Of course religious lobbyists and their cheersquad can expect to be saddled with deserved criticism for that. So too at any other time when selfish myopic religionist nonsense is given undue primacy or privilege. The acting chairman of the ICCRES himself let slip who to “blame”: “[an ethics alternatives to Scripture] doesn’t have the support of the religious community, that’s just a pragmatic reality”. By all means, argue with him if you disagree on that point. You might also ask about his unwittingly ironic remark, “I don’t see how having a small interest group coming into a school and ramping up things helps”.
Objection to this anachronism has history and substantial support. Yet you seem to support a policy of mandatory non-choice for unreligious students and their parents. Why?
Posted Wednesday, 11 November 09 at 10:59AM
Food for thought:
I had two very devout Christian friends at school who did not believe in evolution, therefore their parents withdrew them from science class when we were learning about dinosaurs and evolution. These students, along with others of similar beliefs, were moved into another science class for that period, where they were learning about non-evolution based studies.
If Christian children who refuse to learn about non-Christian beliefs (ie. evolution), can be given alternative learning arrangements for those classes, why is it that non-Christian children, who refuse to learn about Christian values and theology, cannot be given that same right?
My parents are Anglican and had me in scripture classes and Sunday school as a child, however, one week my mother came to pick me up from Sunday school and found that I had been placed in a corner and reprimanded for colouring in MY OWN scripture book. The book was in black and white, somewhat boring to a 6 year old, so I decided that Jesus would be a little happier in colour. I am thankful to my parents for withdrawing me from such a stifling religious practice…I am now an artist and psychologist…perhaps I wouldn’t be if I had let a scripture teacher dictate to me that I couldn’t express my own opinions through drawing!
I am not an atheist, but I do not believe that religion should be forced upon people as it is in giving children the alternative of either “learn scripture, or learn nothing”.
I do however agree with pan.sapiens concern that because this Ethics class will be developed and regulated by an Anglican organisation, that the Ethics and Values that the children will be learning may still be rooted in Christian values.
I personally think that religious practices (and I emphasise practices…not teachings) of all kinds should not be taught in schools at all. If a parent wants their children to learn the values of a certain faith, that can be done in their own time, or make it an elective subject that the students may choose if they wish to learn it.
School is for education, not preaching. I think that a “world religions” class would be a fantastic way to promote tolerance, and give children a well rounded perspective of the diversity of faiths available (who all essentially possess similar values). Perhaps what the class could bring to the students is a discussion of the similarities in these values across religions, which would also teach children not to discriminate, because if they can see the similarities, there will be less to discriminate against. With this class, students would be able to make informed decisions about what religion (if any), is right for them.
Posted Thursday, 12 November 09 at 6:22PM
LoreleiP, I have to support your statement as an intelligent expression with the interest of all in mind but I have to disagree with your ideology that there should be an education for all world religions. the law defines our moral & ethical values & not religion. If religion defined our moral & ethical values, I would be praying for them, just as nicely as they are praying for me.
(This comment has been edited.)
Posted Friday, 13 November 09 at 12:53AM
Say Yes! to pilot Ethics alternative to Scripture:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/SpecialEthicsEducation
Further information:
http://www.ethics.org.au/content/ethics-based-complement-to-scripture