Secular ethics cannot be taught to all children because of the difference in beliefs of many parents. There would of course be many good things in such ethics courses where there is common ground but this may not always be so. Catholics would be against relativism and situational ethics especially if they have no reference to objective standards and first principles. It is not the duty of the State to interfere or teach relativist codes to children whose parents hold to an objective code based on the natural law and objective measures of moral right and wrong. There should be no ethics 'trial' as our childen are not guinea pigs for the ideology of the inner city Left or the Right for that matter. Religious evangelism for Catholics is not one's own set of beliefs but is the same for every Catholic who wishes to be Catholic. All Catholics must agree with the Magisterium ( teaching authority of the Pope and bishops in communion with him). So personal beliefs for Catholics are simply not on. Thiest beleifs , for Catholics, are based on both faith and reason ( see Fides Et Ratio of Pope John Paul II which is official teaching on this from the Vatican website as the primary source for validity and reliability). The assumption made thatonly non-theists can be reasonable and scientific is a gross and false presumption against theists.
'Observation' of changing communtiy beliefs gives no green light to non-theists to dictate that their form of ethics must simply be accepted by parents who decide against it. Parental rights to not having their children's minds affecte by non theist ethics and 'values' must be upheld at all times.

The author is right.
Religion should be eliminated from the classrooms.
In its place should be evidence based learning, concentrating on gender studies, gay studies, racism studies, victimology, etc.
The sort of stuff that will make us globally competitive.
What's that?
They're already being progressively implemented into the curriculum?
That's alright then.

"I think it well established that universities and many schools are predominately made up of left-wing academics, many of whom are quite open about it, and many of whom are also quite socialist, Marxist or feminist.

"Their type of ethics would be quite different to anyone else’s, and many also seem to have considerable difficulty in believing in anything greater than themselves" said Vanna, and McReal is wondering about evangelical school principals.

Vanna, I have no idea which university you go to, but there is hardly any 'leftwing' anything going on at all anymore, just middle-of-the-road middleclass humdrum 'values'.

Academics are now mostly casuals, and fear rocking the boat.

Almost none of them would know how to speak to the world outside their cloisters, so they are a spent and worthless force, mostly.... schools... well, they are hardly havens for 'academics' are they?

'Journeyman sausage stuffer', is about the best they reach.

Yes, McReal, our schools are over-run by evangelical classroom teachers and principals... the public schools I mean.

Scripture Union even openly boasts about its 'network of Christian teachers' taking orders from SU instead of the departments.

You should visit those two sites the author put links to, and wonder why the AEU and state teacher unions are supporting chaplains and 'religion' in schools when they all have very clear, simple, policies supporting 'secular' schools.

A real mystery.

Webby, Catholics are so scared of living in Australia that they have their own schools to go to. Isn't that the best place for them if life in a secular school is to be so very hard?

A secular state is part of the baggage that goes with living in a democracy, otherwise you end up living in a nation run by gods, through 'special people' who 'know' how to understand what their god wants....like Pell, Houston, Rudd, Abbott, Wallace and Jensen...who get it horribly wrong at times, like the rest of we mortals do.

Try the Taliban if you want a non secular state, and maybe you can give up your place here for someone who prefers democracy to theocracy?

Blue Cross, you're prejudiced and it's good that you are showing your honesty. Having Catholics schools is about educting the whole person and includes Catholic Faith as part of our beliefs in Jesus Christ and His teaching Church. Catholic schools continue to grwo whilst public schools decrease. This is through choice. I do however believe in State schools to alwasy have their fair share of funding and funding growth based upon the proportion of the population who choice to use the public system. I support both the Catholic and public systems and thankfully one system is not being disadvantaged greatly against the other. he Catholic system of schools saves the taxpapyers money because we Catholics subsidise our own kids through school fees. I support cutting taxpayer dollars to the wealthiest schools as advocated by Mark Latham when he was the ALP leader and disagrred with Cardinal Pell at the time. We working class Catholics who are Labor people like myself play fair to all sides- public and private. I hope that you Blue Cross will one day be so magnanimous. I have no prblems with a secualr Australia so long as our Catholic Faith and our living out the Faith, especially in education ( religious education lessons in both State and Catholic schools) is left alone and allowed as part of our human rights to practice our religion. We also seek to knock back ethics classes that are contrary to our beliefs in objective values, virtue as opposed to some of the relativist and situational 'values' of secularists. We Catholics are always happy to pay taxes and to support both public and Catholic education. I am opposed to the Coalition version of 'choice' and the kinds of funding to the wealthy schools. I have no time for Jensen and his version of history that is not sympathetic to the Catholics. I also do not accept your nonsense about comparing Catholics to the Taliban. Catholic teaching does not accept theocracy. You might like to try Calvin's Switzerland for that theocratic, anti-Catholic model. Go and learn some history instead of fantasy please.

Webby - why don't you just send your kids to a Catholic school? They're heavily subsidised by the rest of us anyway.

Failing that, there's Sunday School, Mass, self-flagellation, whatever.

Now that I think of it, there's probably a case to be made that the State should require that religious schools in receipt of taxpayer funding provide a secular philosophy/ethics subject in their required teaching.

On Principals - my youngest daughter attended a Qld State School in an upmarket Brisbane suburb, where the Principal was (and still is, as far as I know) an open happyclapper. Hence, a 'Happy Chappy' at my kid's school, together with an approach to RE that relegated my self-professed atheist daughter to the back of the classroom while some godbothering bitch glared at her - until I interceded and secured access to the school library during 'scripture' classes.

Now that she's happily at high school, my daughter continues to experience, read and learn and is even more self-determinedly atheist. And she continues to astonish me: she's joined the Air Force Cadets... ye gads!

The Blue Cross,
One of the great problems facing education is lack of performance pay or a bonus system, and one of the reasons that teachers give for not wanting performance pay, is that when it has been tried, teachers cheated on the system.

We have teachers continuously saying that they work for the common good, but at the first opportunity, they ask for more and more taxpayer’s money.

When given taxpayer’s money, the first thing they are likely to do is spend that money offshore by buying imports from other countries.

We have teachers continuously trying to hide facts and data about schools, with the excuse that schools cannot be compared.

We have many in the education system saying that they have an excellent system, when in international tests, Australian students are now below world average.

We have teachers saying that falling student marks are because of “socio-economic” issues, when in fact Australia had 18 years of continuous growth.

We have numerous feminists in universities in schools that have no interest in the male gender, which means these teachers have no interest in 50% of the students.

And now, there are certain people who believe that teachers should teach ethics.