No doubt Runner is male, I deduce this from his remark that "Christianity has made this nation great." First, this nation is most definitely not great - we have wrecked the environment and been merciless to the original inhabitants. What's great ? Second, values concerning good social behaviour are not invented by Christians but are common to all of progressive humanity. Third, Christianity, like the other patriarchal monotheistic religions, positions women as second class human beings. I'm fed up. How can we think of appointing thousands of chaplains when of late so much predatory sexual behaviour has been revealed as a result of so-called Christians being allowed access to children. Surely safer to have female psycholgists and counsellors if we really care about our children being taught decent values. As Richard Dawkins writes in his latest book "The God Delusion", religion is a form of child abuse in itself. The very thought of my taxes going towards the spreading of ignorant and male-centred superstition makes my blood boil.

can you imagine some of the regular online forum posters as school chaplains?

Kang's good for a laugh!Who's Richard Dawkins? As far as I'm concerned atheism is a form of child abuse. I hate my taxes going to finance the secularist drongoes that seem to control our state schools

Why not go all the way and install teachers at all schools. Something is wrong if a student graduates from Year 12 and spends the first few weeks of university life doing remedial English.

Well,

One things for sure, the (Quote: ‘cynical game play in the culture wars, set to inflame old and new divisions in Australian society - between Maoists and Mar[x]ists, between the secular and the sacred, between heathens and harlots and those deadset for heaven?’ will outnumber ‘Howard's new army of chaplains’.

Cica short-circuits the aged and tired arguments that besets the Left. The only thing I can see in the argument is the underlying GFN movement, which holds a self-belief that Women and the movement are the only ones who have a purchase on morals, rights debate and ‘social responsibility’. So what if a few priests of the modern era go to school? (which is way different from the dark-ages implication of Cica).

Just because the GFN have grafted themselves to the shadow government, doesn’t legitimise their self-assuaged monopoly on morality. We need only look at how Burrows burries herself in blinded rage, to see that not all women have what it takes, yet the GFN movement is gaining strength and wont keep quiet until it finds itself in charge of a mono-party, monological, left-wing republic.

Funny all that, the more power the shadow government gains, and the more the country swings to the left, the more trouble we see. It would be good to see some political stats that reveal this strange state of affairs. All that would be left then, is for the Left to reconcile its rage against the Right.

I think Cica’s article is a very tired rant indeed. Probly over thirty years old. Will it ever end?

There are a good number of teachers in schools currently, Sage.

What is needed over here in WA is doing away with Outcomes Based Education which has directed teachers away from the basics of writing construction, algebra, and so on. As a result really bright young men and women have not been trained to write basic things like reports, essays, etc and need remedial help when they start university.