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Insight: May 25

Insight asks if there is still room for God in the classroom?

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Tonight’s Insight asks if there is still room for God in the classroom?

There’s an upheaval happening in the teaching of religion in NSW’s public primary schools.

For more than 100 years more church leaders and volunteers have given religious instruction to primary school kids in public schools across Australia.

This goes right back to legislation put in place in 1880.

But for the kids whose parents don’t want them to receive the religious instruction on offer, they often find themselves watching videos, colouring in or as some have put it ‘twiddling their thumbs”.

Parents have asked for a more productive alternative.

Currently in NSW, 10 primary schools are trialling a 10 week “ethics class” as an alternative to religious instruction.

Sydney Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen has come out strongly against it and penned “10 reasons the Ethics Trial is not a good idea’’. The Catholic Church has said children who opt out shouldn’t be involved in any kind of formal class.

The Anglicans reported that they lost 47 per cent of their religious classes to the ethics trial and they are not happy. They have joined with other Christian churches and launched a petition to save their scripture classes.

Given that Australia is a secular country and home to people of many faiths, what religious education is appropriate in public schools?

Insight brings together parents, children and faith leaders to discuss how religion should be taught in our public schools and whether there’s still room for God in 2010.

It airs 7:30pm tonight on SBS ONE.

David Knox blogs Eurovision for sbs.com.au

8 Responses

  1. Let’s get really smart and marry the two schools of thought together. Surely, any teachings for our children that get them to think about the thoughtful way to treat one another is better than nothing or distructive teaching. “Work together” is the key, our children need positive role models.

  2. I am a Christian and I believe that there should be R.E in schools, however it should remain optional and there should definitely be an alternative such as the proposed ethics class available! That being said, if I wasn’t a Christian I would probably still send my child to the RE class just to provide a balanced view of world religions of which they would be able to choose from.

    However, as a Christian I think I would send my child to the ethics class. From what I know of RE it’s aimed to kids who don’t go to church or aren’t from Christian homes. I think, if I had attended these classes when I was young, I would bored out of my mind. At least in the ethics class a child from a Christian family wouldn’t be bored out of their mind and just sit there regurgitating answers they learnt the previous Sunday.

    But whatever. Maybe an alternating program would be best? RE one week, ethics the other?

  3. Jensen, Pell and the rest are a disgrace. They absolutely should not be allowed to peddle their religion in state schools. Their arrogance, wrong-headedness and mean-spiritedness in opposing secular ethics classes defies belief.

    What do they think about schools that have a sizeable population of children of Muslim parents? Should the imams be allowed in to preach to all and sundry?

  4. Has anyone even considered half the students who are automatically assigned to the status of sub-human by all the major religions? That is the female ones?

    Why are misogynistic men even allowed access to school children?

    Imagine if all the major religions taught that all non-europeans were not fit to be priests / bishops / ministers because they were intrinsically evil? Would they be allowed inside the school gates?

    Interestingly the Mormons did this until recently – women were sinful because they were descended from Eve and all dark-skinned people because they were descended from Cain. They’ve reneged on the second one but of course not the first one.

  5. I’m atheist but believe an Onjective education in religions (plural) is essential ’cause like it or not, religion has been so ingraned in the evolution of all major societies, including our own.

    Let the kids take this objective education and make up their own minds whether or not they choose to pursue one.

  6. It should be common sense that the state has no place indoctrinating children with any belief system. If I’m not wrong, we’ve actually fought wars to this end, but I digress…

    I don’t know about the rest of you, but when I was in a Qld state primary school back in the early 60’s, this was almost a non-issue. We did have an RE class, but it was very short and infrequent (I *think* it was once a fortnight). You were quite free to decline attending it as well, a class of revision in other subjects was available in lieu. Seems to me that all this noise from both sides of the argument is quite a recent invention.

    If kids are sitting around watching TV as an alternative, that simply highlights yet another shortcoming in the current school system, nothing more. It hardly seems like something horridly difficult to address either.

  7. State schools have absolutely no right to force religious education onto anyone, and even less right to force kids to just sit and stare at the wall when not participating.

    Peter Jensen claiming ethics classes are unethical is the height of stupidity and shows how frightened of change and out of touch they have become in the year 2010.

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