There has been some interesting comments, mostly rational with a small percentage of closed mind idealogues.
There are strong views about standardisation of curriculum and for general outcome to equip students for the workforce.
Concern that teachers impose their particular ideological bias on students when actually the teachers most important role is to provide access to divergent views and to use their teaching skills to teach students HOW to learn, not WHAT to learn.

The secrets to learning lie in Understanding and the development of ones powers of logical reasoning

Ideal religious knowledge is best acquired by exposure to a wide variety of sects,including athesism permitting the student to compare faiths at the same time as they study the sciences including Darwinian theory and evolution. The final imperative is that whereas one's rights to have a faith must be respected, so too is one's rights to NOT have a faith.

Schools need to provide social boundaries and a safe learning environment free from violence whilst nurturing student's curiosity
Children's spiritual development is the perogative of their parents

Cornflower,

Can you help a digital dinosaur? I notice that you have posted first to this topic. I have never seen an article listed with zero comments, but whether this is simply due to not being online at the right time I know not.

Is there a place on the site where topics come up for preview, or is it all done by telepathy? I know the answer must be staring me in the face somewhere, but it doesn't seem to be in front or on top. What am I missing?

I have greatly appreciated some of the posts you have recently made, not only here, but to the "Cave Men Walk the Earth" topic. Do keep it up. You say it all so much better than many others. Well, no, that's not quite right, because there are so few saying anything like what you do. Let me rephrase: if there were many others revealing the unrecognized truths underlying or surrounding these topics, I doubt that they would do it as well as you.

Thanks in anticipation. I am currently posting in the General Discussion: Elections area in the thread to "Don't let Peter Beattie save John Howard's political hide", now being used by daggett (James Sinnamon) as a support repository for his article "Dictatorial Conduct", to which you have posted. If you can afford a post and can help, it would be much appreciated.

Forest...you may be a 'digital' dinosaur but you are an absolute well of knowledge :) don't go away....

The article title is quite worrisome... this bit.

"why are so many of us prepared to tolerate the religious equivalents?"

I'll bet that this author would be out there waving the 'tolerance' flag for every other thing..... and claiming that those who (for example) crave 'selective immigration' are.."RACIST BIGOTS and INTOLERANCE SYCOPHANTS"

Yet here.. his own words are borderline Cultural Genocide.

I presume he doesn't mean we should CULL those who wish to convey a Christian education to their offspring, but what DOES he mean ?

OUTLAW them ?

I don't mind if he waxes long and eloquent about 'Public funding' for religious schools... that's a different debate, but here.. he is deliberatly advocating 'ideological intolerance'.

If the ideas contained in Christianity were 'dark and dangerous, seditious and warlike' ok... I can see some point in attacking them, but when the whole focus of the faith is
1/Love God
2/Love your neighbour
3/The Kingdom of God is in our hearts not the Parliament.
....one wonders where this anti Christian 'hatred' is coming from or is based on ?

It simply underscores how those yelling 'tolerance' are in fact VERY INtolerant..and self serving.

Having read the author's book, and listened to him speak last night, I can reassure some of the alarmed poster's here. Stephen Law is not advocating the closure of all religious and faith based schools. He believes many such schools can be just as liberal in their pedagogy as secular schools. He says so over and over in his book, and also said it over and over last night, though - from their reaction - some of the religious in the audience appeared to be unable to hear what he had actually said.
What he is advocating is liberal rather than authoritarian pedagogy. In other words, he believes children should be taught to think and to question rather than be indoctrinated or taught to accept anything at face value - even religion. He advocates the removal of public funding from authoritarian religious schools. If there were authoritarian political schools of the kind he uses in his analogy he would advocate the withdrawal of funding from them, as well.
Whatever the conservative propaganda, pedagogy in all Australian public schools and most Australian faith schools is decidedly liberal. As teachers in both systems are trained in the same courses at the same university's they tend to follow the "think for yourself and question" method. There is evidence, however, that some religious schools - the more fundamentalist in nature - are moving to a more authoritarian (don't question, just accept) stance. This may be one reason why public school students are both less likely to drop out and more likely to outperform their private school peers once they get to the very liberal learning environment of university. (There are 3 studies that back this, by the way, the latest by Ian Dobson of Monash Uni).

I might be wrong, but it seems some of the critical comments about schooling really mask a bit of hostility towards kids and adolescents. For example, Communicat’s comments about returning the curriculum to basics so that kids learn to entertain themselves seem glib and self-righteous. How would you keep a 16 year-old engaged all day at school by teaching the “basics”? Why would you want to try? The idea that kids can be prepared for an increasingly complex world armed with nothing but the 3 Rs is simply nonsense.

JS Mill is spot on about values and perspective. There is no such thing as a neutral perspective in teaching and learning any more than there is neutrality in news reporting. We tend to be irritated when a contrary perspective is put. I know of many public schools where teachers promote socially conservative values and have a decided bias towards Christian ideologies. Schools tend to reflect the social mores of the staff and the communities in which they exist, as you would expect. Curriculum development in most states and, especially in NSW, explicitly allows for this variety and actively tries to get students to recognise their own perspectives in relation to the content. For example, check out the Studies of Religion HSC course and most of the other courses. Here’s the link:
http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/syllabus_hsc/pdf_doc/sor_guide.pdf

Finally, I disagree with the issue of equivalence when it comes to the expenditure of public funds on private schools. I think public schools should and should always have a prior call on public funds. I don’t think it’s the state’s role to fund private choice and the consequent duplication of resources.

snake: "I would have thought that Dawkins was the epitome of logic with the whole of his belief (or disbelief) based on the fact that religion had no evidence other than blind faith"

On what evidence does Dawkins base his own faith in atheism? Either way it is about faith. Maybe he should de-bunk himself.

Safer ground is to say simply that one cannot find evidence to support a certain belief.

He is an attention-seeking popularist de-bunker who flits like a gadfly through sciences he poorly understands. He is one hell of an entrepreneur though - speaking in terms of fodder for airline booksellers, not serious work.

For the record, I am concerned as any other about religions screwing up people and society. However the religious schools in Oz are quite benign, teaching ethics and values that are not inappropriate for all citizens in a secular State. But we should remain vigilant for any change in that circumstance.

This criticism of Dawkins is spot on:

The Dawkins Confusion, Naturalism ad absurdum by John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame

Quoted here: http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2007/002/1.21.html