Gadzooks! The perfect solution if you can't get spineless politicians to permit "opt in". Good luck, we need this in Queensland.

Our public schools are there to educate our children. For those who want their child indoctrinated with religious rubbish they can do so outside school hours. For a quota of religion just get up early on a Sunday morning and trot off down to your nearest indoctrination centre, and the local zealot will be none to happy to brainwash your child. The zealot will fill their head with all the religious clap-trap their little brain can take. Given enough religious indoctrination by the time they reach adulthood they will hate their self so much, life wont be worth living.

Special religious education, i.e. preaching, has no place in our public schools, funded by taxes in our multicultural society, which should be secular.
"Secular" does not mean banning religion: a secular society protects freedom of speech, which is to the advantage of religious organisations and all others which have a point of view to present. It also means that the state should not favour one religion over another, or religionists over people with no religion.

I do not believe in religion but I respect those who do. I would like to know how many readers of this site remember the religion classes they attended while at school. I attended both state and catholic schools. My memories of these classes are that they were a waste of time. The catholic scripture classes consisted of going through the catechism, generally in a boring manner. Other sects appear to be made up of bible stories. Most parents could do this themselves at home in a more worthwhile manner. When I was young, most children except for the Catholics attended Sunday school each week. Does this occur now? Is there anyone that can claim that what they learnt in these classes were important to what they know about their religion. Maybe the Bishops should get off there butts and encourage these children back to their churches were they teach them their selves. How many of the children who attend scripture at school accompany the parents to church on the weekends. How many of the parents go to church. How many parents check what their children are being taught in scripture?

"In a recent development, the NSW Coalition has announced that when it wins next year’s election, it will repeal the government’s reform and reinstate the churches’ preferred position, thus confirming the fear of many NSW voters that it has become a captive of the Liberal Party’s fundamentalist religious right."

If this is the case, it is time to openly fight against the NSW Coalition for it is trying to create a stupid next generation. In this day and age when people with common sense understand the reality of evolution, NSW is going the opposite direction.

Down with NSW Coalition.

Thanks for a timely and well written article, Glen.

Of your three options, I lean towards the third - that SRE be abolished and that all children receive broad-ranging GRE. Ideally though, I'd like to see it taken a step further.

My preference would be for a nationally based and wide-ranging ethics course - with a comparative study of different religions being just one component, rather than comprising the entire course. Such a course would also include the study of other belief systems such as those based on animist or earth-based values for example. Atheism or non-belief would also be explored as a perfectly valid and rational option.

Such a course would allow children to place religious indoctrination into its true perspective. They would learn that we can live a good and decent life without having to resort to belief in a faith-based religion.

The risk for me of having GRE as a national curriculum subject is that it would still confer far too much credibility onto religion. It risks leaving children feeling that the only choice to be made is that of 'Which religion?'. We neeed them to know they have a clear choice in the first place as to whether or not to include religious belief in their lives.