Webby... how amusing... you are clearly one-eyed i favour of Catholic madrassahs, and yet dare to suggest I am prejudiced!

"Catholic schools continue to grow whilst public schools decrease. This is through choice," so you say.

Well, last time I heard about these exclusionist zones from society they were growing, but not with Roman Catholic children, who continue to be sent to public schools because their parents are too poor (or intelligent, or both) to send their children to them. It is not 'choice', a hollow phrase from Howard's era, carried on happily by the likes of Rudd, Swan and Tanner, but the creation of education as yet another commodity, and a consumer item.

A brief scan through the MySchool page told me that the Vatican schools here were doing very poorly, worse than the public schools, so.... what is the idea of 'choosing' a poor school to send your 'investment' to, pray tell?

As for 'paying tax' hahaha, religion is exempt from tax, and pays none, making your glorious church a drain on our society, to the tune of billions of dollars a year.... so please don't bother with the Furphy... 'private schools save tax'. A complete untruth.

CJM... Please.... there is NO.... NO... RE in Qld public schools, and NEVER has been... (see p.2).

CJM.... (p.2).... It is Religious Instruction, or RI, NOT RE. Please alter your memory banks and update your dictionary. As for intervening... yes, ED Qld, and Bligh, are happy to totally ignore the law of the state, and allow schools to break-the-law on this matter. Why?

I'd save your pennies and buy her out of anything to do with the armed forces... they are hotbeds of coercion, full of 'religious' people who think they serve their god in killing others. Just look at the goose that runs the ACL.

Vanna.... "One of the great problems facing education is lack of performance pay or a bonus system"... absolute codswallop. Do we expect nurses to be on performance pay, or bonuses... or coppers.... this is just another empty, albeit popular, nonsense from capitalists and unthinking neo-libs.

The single biggest problem facing education is the total lack of quality managers. There should be no 'under performers' tolerated, in any industry. That is solely a management issue. And if teachers 'cheated' in trials, then that was because they had dodgy managers too.

Anyway, look at The Storm fiasco.... 'bonus payments' seem to have undone that crew, although, as with schools, poor managers are to blame.

Of course, poor training, a lack of 'being a profession', very badly designed university courses (also victims of the capitalist themes that you describe), unreasonable expectations on young people, dim witted parents too scared to say boo!, and stupid politicians all have to be added to the mix, but overall, 'management' is totally lacking in 'education'.

BTW.... there are far more women at uni than men, so men hardly make up 50% of the cohort.

Webby and others: The point of my paper is that basic human decency is part of the 'message'children learn(or at least it should be)in their general education: respect for each other and fair play especially in sport, but also in subjects such as social science, English literature; critical thinking particularly in science, maths and history, etc. An understanding of the international human rights documents would provide a great source of 'ethics' education. Children are also rightly exposed to a range of personal philosophical doctrines about the meaning of life and other cosmologies in a non-sectarian way in some government schools. You are wrong to think that there is an obligation on the state to teach religion: the right is simply for for everyone to be free to follow their own religion, to educate their children accordingly if they wish, and for others to be free from the imposition of the religions of others. State education is supposed to be secular (except, of course in Queensland, but that is another matter...).

The Blue Cross maintains that I misread the intended message of the author (Meg Wallace). I regret that I gave that impression. I fully agree with the statement that all students should be exposed to the benefits of evidence-based reasoning. The four R's: reading, (w)riting, (a)rithmetic, and reasoning! The point I was trying to make is that it is not evangelising to promote the skills of critical thinking in education. The word evangelising is soaked in religious connotations, that is accepting statements on FAITH alone. Evangelists are an irritating subset of the human population, and their methods of trying to "convert" people are intensely annoying.

The real problem is that we are stuck with an Australian citizenry that pays lip service to religion, even though Australians, to my observation, are amongst the most secular-inclined people on the planet. Yet many Australians are at least tolerant of religion, knowing that religious beliefs give comfort to many people.

Australian society is increasingly waking up to the hypocrisy of much religion. The current scene where the Catholic church is fighting a hopeless cause to cover up the activities of pedophile priests is a classic example. As John Ure (former commander of the NSW North Region Major Crime Squad has recently said: "... church leaders and their supporters are arguing that school students cannot have ethics instruction without a religious (Christian) component. It could be persuasively argued that church leaders who have betrayed their Christian community by their actions in dealing (or failing to deal) with pedophile clergy have foregone any claim to ethical superiority."

So for many Australians, scripture lessons (promoting biblical inerrancy, "souls", the afterlife and other paranormal beliefs) invading public (state) schools are anachronistic and should, ideally, be replaced with secular ethics classes. But that ideal is unlikely to occur any time soon. In the meantime, at least give the parents and their kids a choice.

Dear Meg,
Thanks for a worthy contribution to a delicate debate.

I speak as a parent who wants to send my kid to a state school (for a variety of reasons). In today’s pluralistic society, he’s going to experience a mixture of philosophies and viewpoints. Overall, these enhance rather than detract from the richness of the public school experience.

Christians have made a significant contribution to the country for generations. They vote and pay taxes. They support their local schools and have a stake and a heritage in the public school system, as much as anyone else. So they don’t want to be the ones to feel marginalised or excluded.

I think you need to define further what you mean by certain terms and concepts: ‘secular’ education, ‘separation of church and state’, and ‘evidence-based reasoning’. You might say that the meaning of ‘separation of church and state’ might soon be further defined in the High Court, but I think the phrase is a bit jingoistic, and I don’t think it appears in anyone’s constitution.

You might grant some very positive and well meaning definitions for these words. But if or when we find these words being offered under the banner of atheism, then you can expect some concern from Christians wary of the Trojan horse.

To totally ignore religion, or treat it as something that has no place in daily life, is one way of teaching atheism by default.