If we each prayed with conviction and hope the Lords prayer each day, we would recognise and mouth aspiration for a better world and admiration of a perfect character, seek forgivness releasing our mind from self centeredness and realise personal accountability of the impact of our action on others as we relate to our highest moral conscience. Educate the mind with love and respect and all the activities we occupy ourselves with will have true value and purpose.

Most religions seem to profess similar values - love your God, love other people and the do as you would be done by golden rule. (Though as someone once pointed out, the Christian God, according to his/her 10 commandments does seem to spend an inordinate amount of time and commandments exhorting followers not to erect idols or take his name in vain etc, etc, before he gets to the real how-to-live stuff.)
Most of us secular humanists would have no argument with love other people and do as you would be done by stuff, either. So I think we can argue that these are universal human values, not just religious ones.
The problem is not with the values you profess or believe, its easy to sound pious, but with the values you actually live by, the way you act upon those values. And human beings, whether religious or not, seem to be a great deal better at preaching values than practising them.
If we really loved our neighbours as ourselves, for example ( and our govt keeps telling us we're a Christian country) would we be setting up such hurdles for them to climb over before we'll let them come and live here?

Hear hear Ena,

The hypocrisy of our political leaders preaching to us and to hardworking underpaid and under"valued" teachers about the supposed lack of values taught in public schools is sickening.

The subsidisation of elitist religious private schools with working people's taxes while public schools are being allowed to rot shows just what "values" the ruling class in this country have.

The pundits marvel over the flow of parents to private schools and claim that this is evidence that people prefer the "values" of private schools. However what they don't link it to is the systematic underfunding of public schools which leads to substandard facilities and large class sizes.

Of course parents want the best education for their children, however rather than providing people with "choices", the aim of the government appears to be that if you want a good education for your child, the only "choice" you will have is to pay thousands of dollars to send them to a private school. If you don't have the money, the only "choice" you will have will be to give them a substandard public education.

The attempted promotion of religion in all realms of life is a cover for the growing social and economic polarization of society as a whole.

I recently finished my education, and was exposed to all three school systems; Government, Catholic and Independant. The most fulsome education in values I received was from the Independant school (also Catholic, but not in the Catholic system). The premise there was the same as it was when the school was established in the mid-late 19th century; that if you're a good, Christian gentleman who'll work for the common wealth, then you will be a good citizen.

The premise seemed correct. I found that such a grounding called not only to loyalty to a system which emerged from Christian values (liberal, secular democracy), but also challenged students to look at it in the light of those Christian values to see whether or not it was on a good course. The thing that was done there which was not done at the public school I attended was to really challenge in the realm of private rather than public morality. Its message of public morality, based around good works and such, has similarities in what the public system teaches, although there is a greater focus on charity rather than government. Its private message seeks to compliment that, by calling a life of Christian virtue, which was seen as necessary to ensure ethical public dealings. As will next to all religious schools, there was a variety of ethnic background, languages, of course, many not of religious backgrounds. In fact, the biggest minority was English, after Celtic.

Australia's civic patriotism has always been complimented by Christianity, which was arguably the greatest reducer in crime and increased in civic virtue in the growth of the early colony. Those old private schools, still known as Public Schools in the traditional sense, are just that... there to serve the Public Good. There is no reason to doubt their importance as furnishers of leaders, and as creaters of balanced, prepared citizens.

As a secular humanist I accept that others may choose to adopt another religion. The fundamental thing, I believe, is the call to "love thy neighbour as thyself" This seems to be the bedrock of a civil society. I would like all schools, public and private to teach this formally and experientially. The next most fundamental value that I would like to see incorporated in the teaching and practices of schools is that of tolerance to other religions and points of view. This is most difficult. To acknowledge the possibility of someone else's religion or secularism being okay is to undermine the validity of one's own faith. How brave a belief that can accept that others can be okay even with their peculiar beliefs! And as for the public-private school thing, well I am sorry to say that the public schools have lost the discipline capacity that private schools manage to retain. Sorry, you can't always allow full human rights to kids who are just learning to be human.

DFXK and Fencepost,
A couple of thoughtful posts. I have to agree with the teaching a personal faith is more impacting and forming of behaviour than merely teaching social ethics.

Love thy neighbour is dependent on how one sees themself in the bigger scheme of the universe and creation. As the Scripture says love thy neighbour as you love yourself. The personal value of self worth in the scheme of Creation in this period of history places value upon the individual. The first instructions given to man recorded as religious was to establish family and the second was to nurture and care for the garden and the ground from which he draws substance and survival.

When these two principles are respected and guarded as paromount to human survival then society will flourish. These are the principles of life.

Much of public education is focused in money, hence the politics of envy of those defending such. They merely see lack of money as the problem of public education. Money is the basic currency of their thinking. What is lacking is a real sense of value of themselves and their children. Because parents value of their children in mosts cases ranks higher than money they sacrifice to give children in their care values greater than mere assets is the reason non-public schools are growing.

Teachers that see money as the answer to teaching values fail to inspire children of things of higher value than money. They fail to realise parents of children in private education also pay taxes, as well as healthy school fees. When my children were in private parent controlled school our family paid 6% of our gross yearly income, as fees were structured on our last years gross income.