Australia: If you won’t learn religion in school, just go away and read for a bit

Mon 8 Nov 2010 14:03 • Around the web,education,ethics,Humanism,politics

[Australian] EDUCATION Minister Bronwyn Pike has ducked a potential backlash from the powerful Christian lobby by rejecting a proposal to allow humanism to be taught in primary schools during time allocated for religious education.

The Humanist Society of Victoria, which wants to teach an ethics-based curriculum [alongside religious education], is planning a legal challenge, saying that the current system indirectly discriminates against non-religious children, causing ”hurt, humiliation and pain and suffering” to them when they opt out of religious education classes.

Children in two-thirds of Victorian state primary schools are taught Christian scripture by volunteers, even though the Education Act says state schools must be secular and ”not promote any particular religious practice, denomination or sect”.

Parents must sign forms if they want their children to be excluded from ”special religious instruction” classes, 96 per cent of which teach Christianity, with the remaining 4 per cent covered by the Jewish, Buddhist and Baha’i faiths.

Children who do not attend these sessions are not allowed to be taught anything their classmates might miss out on during this time, so they are often put in another room where they read or play on computers.

The Education Act has a special exemption from its secular roots to allow religious education.

Continues: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/thou-shall-not-teach-humanism-alp-20101106-17i8t.html

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1 Comment

  1. Ben Finney
    Tue 9 Nov 2010 • 23:15

    From the end of the article:

    Melbourne mother Dina Cragie, who is Jewish, lobbied for Judaism to be offered at her children’s Hawthorn East school, but they were plucked from maths classes to attend. ”I’m not happy with it; it’s a secular school, and the fact that so much time is spent on religious education is baffling to me – and to have to choose between maths and religion offends me,” Ms Cragie said.

    The journalist should ask Dina: Why does she not ally with those parents who want only a secular education for their children: pressure for an inclusive secular ethics class to be taught, where all students can attend equally?

    ”Ultimately you should teach all religions or none.”

    Exactly. The utter infeasibility of having a publicly-funded school teach every religion leaves the latter option: publicly-funded schools should have no religious instruction at all.

    Dina should be agitating for this along with all the other parents of children excluded by the current religious agenda.

    Public funds should be used to teach the history and sociology of religion, not the pretense of ethics in religion.

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