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

Dear OnTheBeach,

I accept your argument about teaching Islam, but how is this particular public-school indoctrination different in principle than other types of indoctrination?

Is it really OK to force-feed children with ideas of Christian/Western civilisation just because it represents some majority? Is it really OK to brainwash children with the idea that when they grow up they must become cog-wheels in the government's economical "work-force", striving for wealth and technology so they become good tax-payers?

The whole concept of a "national curriculum" is obscene, along with that of public (meaning government-managed, not just funded) schools.

Yes, the issue of Islam is a wake-up call, but the roots of the problem are much deeper!

Yuyutsu,

I agree that education should empower and not shackle.

In fact a well taught English literature course will empower and proof students against many of the toxic ideologies out there. It helps students young and old with some of the perplexing questions in life.

However philosophy would also benefit. Because there are some very sly and unsavoury intruders with their own secondary agenda involved in making education policy in Oz and sometimes, in delivering at the sharp end.

I see no reason why philosophy shouldn't be one of the fundamentals of the curriculum from as early as possible in education.

Na, I think burning agnostics at the stake makes more sense....leave the books alone!

Diver Dan

But you yourself are agnostic to religions other than your own.

Yes no doubt the secularist are happy for the kids to be taught that's its fine to have 30 different sexual partners. I mean planned parenthood can then rip the babies from the womb and sell the parts. The later the term the more money. The secularist are then are dumb enough to want to know why suicide rates among teens are horrendous. Well with no moral based to draw from its not surprising. No wonder parents who don't even believe line up to send kids to private schools. Oh that's right its because of lack of funds!

Yuyutzu<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.>

The above opinion by you, convinces me of what I've always believed, that
It is religions who are intolerant of the society around them, not the other way around.
You believe members of your religion are clean and not filthy like those who aren't members of your religion.
Not far from that belief to purifying and cleansing the world of the infidel or heretic
Either by beheading or burning them at the stake. This of course is a holy act to rid the world of the filthy sinners who are not clean,without sin, and holy like members of your religion.
Jesus said, "let you who is without sin amongst us cast the first stone"
He was referring to the woman they were about to stone for adultery.

The Christian churches forgot those words when they were burning people at the stake.
The Muslim religion teaches the opposite, stone people to death for some supposed sexual sin.
Whenever the churches have had too much power over people's lives in history
They bought nothing but misery to the people who had to live under their punitive,
Regressive ideas

There is a difference, not apparently appreciated by the author, between books being banned/burnt and books being judged to be not suitable for certain purposes. The books in question were not banned as evidenced by the fact that at all times everyone was free to walk into a shop and buy them. They were judged to be unsuitable for unsupervised, proselytising scripture teachers to place before children, given the certainty that many children would be told by their untrained, volunteer scripture teachers that their every contentious word was true.

And who knows what comparable implausible claims are equally guaranteed to be true by scripture teachers of non-Christian faiths.

Scripture is the only subject allowed in public schools in which the teacher is free to insist that children believe things that are both highly improbable and incapable of being verified. It is bad enough that scripture teachers are free to lie, as they do every time they tell children that they know for sure that Jesus died to save them from something, the lie being in their claim that they know this to be true when they don't. Nobody does. It is scandalous that the Education Department has no power to rein in scripture teachers who assure children, for example, that Jesus loves every child and listens to their prayers, something they might passionately believe but cannot possibly know to be true.

Books that assure children of the certain truth of highly improbable and clearly unverifiable claims in history, geography, mathematics etc. are, for very good reasons, not approved for use in public schools.Neither should they be allowed in Scripture, irrespective of which religion is attempting to press them upon the utterly helpless students which their equally helpless principals must, by law, herd into accessible groups so that scripture teachers can practise their missionary skills upon them.

Glennc

Your post says it so well.

One might have thought that the issue was the one of deception by the DEC - claiming to lift a ban when it had not. Or even judging something to be unsuitable when it had not been read. And with no reasons given.

Dear Cherful,

Religion is always about bringing oneself closer to God - not others.

Religious organisations such as churches exist for the purpose of guiding and supporting those devotees who want to come closer to God in doing so. No amount of telling others who have no interest in God how to behave can bring them closer to God - they may behave as you order them, but that would only be an external gesture, while resentment rages inside.

Yes, unfortunately some churches have forgotten this, some even forgot religion altogether (yet people, including on this forum, still misguidedly refer to them as "religions" long after).

One of the main reasons churches have forgotten religion is through their unholy alliance with states, being close to the seats of power. Historically, states have corrupted their churches and bribed its ministers so they, through their teachings, serve the state's interests instead of God. This must stop and so I support the separation of state and church - in order to save the churches!

GlenC, academic topics are taught with the same aura of certainty, but when is the last time any teacher said "it is hypothesised that.."?

They say "this happened", "he did that", "this means...".

There is never any doubt or admission of the conjectural nature of most "knowledge".

Every hypothesis, theory, conjecture based on rudimentary fragments from a lost age is presented as *fact*.

And the arts are totally subjective.
How does one objectively "verify" Beethoven wrote good music?

If you want to ban everything that can't be 100% verified or anything that might possibly offend someone's sensibilities, kids may as well not go to school at all, because the book shelves will be empty.

Keep your insane, superfairy, voices in your head beliefs out of my life .

You godbotherers need to understand the difference between

I cant do that because of my religious beliefs and
YOU cant do that because of my religious beliefs.

KEEP IT TO YOURSELF!

mikk "KEEP IT TO YOURSELF!"

They do.

Students only attend the class chosen by their *parents*.

They can also not attend at all.

It's optional.

I never attended (Not because my parents weren't religious. Unfortunately, there were. My father was a Jehovah's Witness minister. But there were too few students or no available mentor for our own class.)
Non-attendees can use the time to catch up on schoolwork. Win-win.

Schools are places of learning essential and verifiable facts; along with the most plausible hypothesis?

Churches are places that promulgate and inculcate entirely unprovable myth and often contradictory legend?

And like East and West. Never the twain should meet.

Incidentally, some folks, (a significant portion/around 40%?) still believe that the sun revolves around the earth; as part of so called faith based conviction! (Dr Carl and ABC fact check.)

And underlines the need to exclude all faith based conviction from our educational institutions; particularly those with their hand out for some public funding!
Rhrosty.

Rhrosty "And like East and West. Never the twain should meet."

Racist!

Dear Rhrosty,

So you find it acceptable for religious people to be taxed in order to provide funds for YOUR educational institutions, so that YOUR children can be brainwashed with whatever ideas your state wishes to imprint on their minds (including, but not limited to, your personal preference for verifiable facts)?

This has nothing even to do with social welfare: by your ideas it seems, even poor (but religious) parents should be made to pay for the schooling of wealthy (but secular) children - to have their children go hungry so that your children can enjoy every luxury in their schools, that as a punishment for refusing to have their children indoctrinated by your secular state.

What an interesting sense of justice...

Yuyutsu
Churches have often been the state. As they are in Muslim countries today.
They are often not elected though, but appointed by the imans.

There for they are not chosen by the people. They are dictatorships, whereas
Democratic states are elected by the people. Democracy itself is not perfect, but
It is the only system in the world where the people have any say at all.

Priests and imans live off the monies collected by the church, therefore they
Have a monetary self interest in allowing no scientific questioning that might weaken
the number of their followers and thus cut off their income.
Believe in a god if you must but do not trust in or give any power to the church and the men who run it.
Most of them are far from holy and have no idea how to make just laws for the people whom they have power over.
Much like politicians really.

Dear Cherful,

What you write is sadly true.

Such churches have become part of the state and a "religion" in name only.

What I repeatedly urge on this forum, is that people stop blaming religion for the crimes of organisations which are (either to begin with or have become over the centuries) religious in name only. Instead, you should point your finger at those organisations, churches and mosques and tell them in their face: "YOU ARE NOT RELIGIOUS!"

Some of the worst war lords in history were
Guilty of waging war for the church.

The pope had his own army back in the days of the Holy Crusades.
Just as the Muslim religion has its own modern army warlords now,
Isis.

It soon becomes evident that the Holy Crusades were all about conquest
And the taking of land and territorial wealth. Nothing holy about it, just
The usual human self interest dressed up in holy clothes.

Ditto, Isis. Nothing clean or pure about these defenders of the faith.

CHERFUL "Democracy itself is not perfect, but it is the only system in the world where the people have any say at all."

And what "say" do "the people" have in the educational curriculum?

The religion class is one of few where people outside the education department have any direct involvement and that's the one class you want to ban.

Since most "people" have some metaphysical belief system, a truly "democratic" curriculum would inevitably include the very class you're all bitching about.

You do not speak for "the people".
You speak for a particular mindset just as narrow in outlook as religious fanatics.

You can have your "say" by your kids not attending.

Cherful, you're nothing but a liar,the holy Crusades were purely defensive, by the 11th century the Jihad had consumed 2/3 of Christendom and for a mere 200 years Europeans valiantly tried to take back what was rightfully theirs, they failed and were only able to slow the horde in 1917 giving us a few decades of peace. What you see now is merely the resumption of the Jihad after one of it's shorter hiatus and more minor setbacks.

Meanwhile non religious people murder the unborn in masses and even profit from the body parts. Obviously Cherful is wilfully ignorant of this fact

With all the emphasis on 'hate speech' of late it makes me wonder why the koran has not been banned. There are so many examples of bigotry and incitement to violence within its covers; and it is supposed to be the unchangeable word of god so it can't simply be modified.