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May 14, 2011
I have to agree with this position that education in Australia's public schools should remain ''free, compulsory and secular''. That means no religious education in state run public schools.
Unfortunately, the various state governments around Australia impose religious instruction on their public schools, and the religious right are determined to get God into the public schools in order to roll back humanism and secularism as more school children elect not to attend religious scripture classes in public schools.
Currently, religious education (ie., scripture classes) is Christian in orientation, despite Australia being a multicultural society, is more proselytizing than education and reflects the desires of a minority of parents. If the latter want a Christian education for their children, then they should go to a private school or find classes outside school hours (a Sunday school class.)
Religious "education" is a cover for religious instruction that has existed since 1950. The usual situation is that once a week someone comes in from outside the school and teaches the children about Jesus (creationism, fear of devils, hellfire and punishment etc). Those pupils not participating can go and sit by themselves in another room. So why cannot they have an education in ethics?
Australia is not a Christian country. Section 116 of the Australian Constitution states:
Commonwealth not to legislate in respect of religion:
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
Despite this, we have evangelizing in public schools by Access Ministries, an organization which trains Chaplains for Christian scripture classes in public schools. The CEO of Access Ministries, Evonne Paddison, has publicly advocated using the opportunity given by the Chaplains in Schools program to convert children to Christianity.
The religious classes, which are not education about religions but education into a particular religion that are funded by the state, need to be replaced with education on the major forms of religious thought and expression characteristic of Australian society; on different ethical traditions; and they need to be taught by trained teachers rather than volunteers.
It comes as no surprise that the Churches and religious groups are strongly against any ethics education in moral reasoning for those children who opt out of the religious "education" class. They argument is that it undermine religious education in public schools. If ethics is confined to religion, then ethics would apply only to religious people. But ethics applies as much to the behavior of the atheist as to that of the Christian.
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One religion in title is one too many Gary!
My question is - could the Atheist Foundation of Australia apply for a contract to supply chaplains for schools?
If not, why not?
The AFA by the way has just announced its conference for Melbourne next year in April.