I really do have no idea why some states still have religious classes.
Religion is a personnel insanity to be practiced privately.

Agree Cobber; incidentally the best way to improve the popularity of relatively mediocre books is to ban them!?
Rhrosty.

Hi Cobber,

"Religion is a personal insanity to be practiced privately."

Yes, indeed, there should be complete separation of church and state, including mosque and state, temple and state, and hole-in-the-wall fruit-cake sects and state. No involvement of Anglicanism, or Shari'a, or Scientology in anything under the control, or within the responsibility, of the state.

Part and parcel of all that is the active enforcement of equal rights before the law for all, male and female, and the oversight of all educational services by state authorities.

Religion should forever remain a private, individual matter, with the rights of those individuals to come together, but without any government or state funding or support for obviously religious purposes, such as Kosher or halal certification.

Of course - as in the case of education - the state is responsible for the provision of all those services (and in education, say, a nationally-approved curriculum) to which each individual is entitled as an equal member of the Australian community.

Joe
www.firstsources.info

Worldliness is a personal insanity to be practiced privately - No sane or rational person would invest in that which is bound to perish.

Thus there should be full separation of the state from the church, to keep churches clean, focused on God and away from the filth of the worldly state.

Did they ban the Koran too? (Ironic rhetorical question).

Interesting times ahead..

"Call for schools to teach a positive view of Islam while branding Australia racist

..Given that Australia’s schools, on the whole, are secular in nature and the argument that classrooms should not be used to teach a particular faith, it’s understandable why introducing religion into school subjects, for many, would be unacceptable.

Not so, when it comes to teaching Islam and introducing Muslim perspectives to the curriculum. Those responsible for the booklet Learning From One Another: Bringing Muslim Perspectives into Australian Schools, sponsored by the Australian Curriculum Studies Association and The University of Melbourne’s Centre for Excellence in Islamic Studies are happy to assert that teaching Islam should be embedded in every school subject.

Citing the Julia Gillard inspired national curriculum directive that subjects must be taught from an Asian perspective and the, supposedly, negative stereotypes presented in the media, the booklet argues that there is a “degree of prejudice and ignorance about Islam and Muslims” and Australian students must be taught to embrace difference and diversity.

The booklet’s authors also bemoan the fact that “most texts used in Australian English classes still have a Western or European perspective” and argue that providing “students with a Euro-centric version of history denies them the opportunity to evaluate different perspectives on past world events”.

Ignored is that some 64 per cent of Australians describe themselves as Christian, while those committed to Islam only make up 1.7 per cent of the population. Also ignored is that while Australia is a multicultural society, our political and legal institutions and much of our culture is Western in origin and steeped in the nation’s Judeo-Christian heritage and moral framework..

Multiculturalism is based on the mistaken belief that all cultures are of equal worth and that it is unfair to discriminate and argue that some practices are wrong. The Muslim booklet adopts a multicultural approach, arguing that Australians must accept diversity and difference and that Muslims and Christians accept the same values and beliefs."
http://tinyurl.com/2vggbxm