Some Facts:
* Australian teenagers have the 3rd highest abortion rate and the 6th highest pregnancy rate in the developed world
* For the first time in Australian history, there are now more abortions taking place than actual births amongst teenagers
* Condom use amongst teenagers has fallen as most STI/STD rates are rapidly rising
* The 100,000 abortion taking place each year and the treatment of Chlamydia (plus infertily issues arising from non treatment), will cost the Australian Tax payer over $1 BILLION over the next five years!
How much extra new federal funding is the government putting into comprehensive sex education and values education? $0
THE ANSWER?
New federal funding for comprehensive sex education such as 'Sexual Health for Life' www.sexedco.com AND 'Values for your life' by the same course publisher.

Brazuca seems to fundamentally misunderstand the difference between public and private education.
In Australia, public education is secular. It does not use tax payers money to inculcate a particular religious viewpoint. Its purpose is to educate all our children whatever their race, creed, gender or economic situation.
In Australia, almost uniquely in the developed world, tax payers money is used to heavily subsidise private schools -often as much as 80% of their total income - that are church based and so we do use taxpayers money to inculcate a particular religious viewpoint. It is interesting to point out, that while public schools are open to all, although some parents may choose not to use them, many tax payers are currently contributing to large sums of public money given to private schools that would never accept their children as students.
Surely, Brazuca, you should be arguing that all tax payer funded schools should be public and secular, and that private schools should be unsubsidised and, well, private.

I think we must understand that we cannot teach values in the same way we teach the elements in the periodic table. This is because, while the periodic table is supported by experimental evidence, values, on their own float free with no visible means of support other than sounding like a nice idea. Values must be attached to a seminal story for them to mean anything other than good intentions. This is why they cannot be detached from the seminal story of a culture, in our case that of Judeo/Christianity. This is the way values, or more accurately virtues, are clothed. Any effort to teach values on their own will result in either derision, or if they are taken seriously, pietism, neither of which is the intended outcome.
I have discussed these issues in detail in : http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=655
Peter Sellick

Hi Geoffrey,

Thanks for the support. I also agree with Peter that values need to be seen as arising out of or being based on a larger narrative. A liberal/humanist view of education can be traced back through the renaissance and reformation to ancient Italy and Greece. The English philosopher, Michael Oakeshott, refers to the conversation of Mankind and the need to educate young people to understand and to contribute to the conversation.

Yes, the essays on education in Oakeshott's Rationalism in Politics are excellent; they, like the work of many profs of that generation at the LSE, demonstrate a breathtaking knowledge of the narrative of which you speak and an acute awareness of our place within it.

That narrative certaintly does reach back to Aristotle, Plato and Socrates but an understanding of that sweep of history seems uncommon now. It's unfortunate that poor old Classics is given, as a discipline, so little attention. Neglect of the canon in favour of faddish vocationalization is a myopic policy.

So when is an education minister anywhere going to take up this issue of cultural knowledge and the need for education rather than training? I remember raising it with David Kemp after reading Alan Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind". Kemp was aware of the book, but didn't appear to want to act on its premise.