For someone who is opposed to toxic rhetoric this article was full of it.

Militant atheists are not people who seek a secular approach to schooling. Young children need to make up their own minds about their spirituality and should not have it foisted apon them by taxpayers who won't all be Christians.

A militant atheist might be defined as one who wishes to ban religion altogether. The parents mentioned in the article only seek for children to be protected against proselytising agendas. They are not as I see it arguing that children from Christian families be denied access to Christian teachings in their private lives. There is more than enough out-of-school programs such as Church, Sunday School, Bible classes and youth groups administered by the Christian Churches.

I found this article to be quite hostile in its attack on atheists and secularism. Try living in places like Iran where Christians are persecuted and you might in your ivory tower understand why secularism is the only civilised way to go.

There are at least 8 hours in every primary student's day when parents could impart religious beliefs and teaching, if it matters to them. The SRI time could more usefully be spent teaching comparative religion and belief systems, such as atheism and ethics, or better still, just teaching the crowded curriculum.

Rob we 'militant atheists' are not, in fact, asking for religion to be expunged from schools. Almost all of those opposing the current delivery of SRE agree that a knowledge of religion's role in history, art, literature, etc. is an essential part of a liberal education. To that end, we absolutely support a course in comparative religion taught by trained, secular teachers without a religious agenda to evangelise and indoctrinate. (See, for instancehttp://www.reena.net.au/ )

Children should receive religious education - but not the religious instruction which is the current method of delivery. And, if you don't understand the difference, consider whether you would prefer your teenager to receive sex education or sex instruction at school.

What we don't want is children exposed to your particular hateful brand of Christian indoctrination. You know, the kind that makes the leader of your organisation tweet on ANZAC Day that our diggers didn't fight for gay marriage and Muslims - and then try to get himself out of trouble by placing the blame on others, and saying he'd only been on Twitter for a week - when, in fact, he'd been on Twitter for 14 months. These are not the 'values' most decent Australians want passed on to their children. Further, I would respectfully suggest that the name of the ACL is now so compromised that you're hindering rather than helping the cause of SRE by supporting it. You only highlight SRE's association with your organisations extremist, fundamentalist views. (I note that one of the few Christian organisations that stepped up to defend the ACL over the ANZAC affair was Catch the Fire Ministries - fine bedfellows indeed!)

(continued ....)

... Of course, ACCESS also does a great job at exposing its fundamentalism. According to ACCESS it's no use kids going to their teachers about bullying - teachers are lazy, rude to the children, and not in the least concerned about bullying. The only thing that will get a teacher to respond to a child's complaints, apparently, is the intervention of God through prayer. http://mike-stuchbery.com/2011/05/03/831/

And then, of course, there's the Illawarra SRE teacher who entertains 14 year olds with a graphic account of 'an atheist's experience in hell' - all wailing and gnashing of teeth. Or the non-Scripture kid who is made to sit in a broom closet while the other kids 'enjoy' Scripture.

No, Rob, SRE must go. You and your ilk have taken advantage of the privilege offered to you and your great leader has shown clearly in the last week why fundamentalist, religious extremists with divisive beliefs which are offensive to the majority of rational, reasonable Australians shouldn't be let anywhere near impressionable children.

It's so simple to fix this situation. Just make the SRI "opt in", not "opt out", then parents who actually want their children exposed to this stuff can make a conscious decision to have their kids so exposed. "Opt out" is problematic as it exposes parents to the problem of having their kids singled out from their peers even though many of their peer's parents probably also see no point in having their kids exposed - they just don't want their kid ostracised from their peers.

If the religious see a problem with "opt in" perhaps they should stick to exposing their kids to this stuff in their own time - like Sundays?

If the religious are so confident in their product they should embrace "opt in" and get selling!!

The option of opt in and opt out is out of the question.
All educations systems are not providing the standards required by industry and commerce.
There are far better things that should be taught to chilren than SRI.
If Parents want to opt in their children then send them to sunday school and bible study.
I object to my tax money that is being grudgingly given to education in pitiful amounts wasted on SRI.