I am not a religious person, and I don’t care whether or not religion is taught in schools if it is not compulsory as it was in my day.

But, what I find extremely hypocritical is that people like this author, a member of the extreme left Greens and a teacher of mumbo-jumbo lateral thinking, along with his loony left mates in education unions, reserve the right to brain wash students with their own extremist views of politics and the way they think society should be run.

The Green Left view of everything is much more dangerous than religion, which is easier to see through at a time when most of its sensible practitioners no longer believe in the myths and fears presented by religion in past times. The Greens are spoilers and wreckers who want to change the face of society and economic principles that work, to the grey, depressive existence of socialism.

The only religion as dangerous as the Green Left religion is Islam.

Other god-following religions are so ineffectual and irrelevant that they are dying a natural death in secular countries anyway.

All this author and other adherents of the Green Left religion want is to clear the way quicker than they can apparently wait to reinforce better their own ideas in our already ruined public school system.

Not only is Secularism good for you, it is essential for a healthy society.

Are the Islamic states that exist under Islamic law healthy societies? Was the Christian society we had before the separation of state and religion good for you? There is no difference to what happens to any society when it is subject to religious law. Those who dissent are persecuted.

A secular society is one of the ways we protect the minorities and protect freedom of thought and speech. It even supports those with weird ideas about 'adherents to green left religions' and vague mutterings about 'post modern whatever's.' You cannot do that in a religious State.

Christianity is better for you, Chrsitaisn are happier in general, have better marriages, more kids, less depressed, less anxious and volunteer more than their secular brothers and sisters.

On the other hand, everything wrong with society can be traced back to secularism - abortion, anxiety, feminism, broken families and broken hearts.

Wow - these comments have taken an unusual tack.
While I myself am very religious I can see the value of secularism in society at large (and our schools as one example).
I myself had serious misgivings about the introduction of Chaplains into public schools. The chaplaincy program is dominated by a certain segment of christianity and - even though chaplains are not meant to proselyte - there is an implicit endorsement of a message when you introduce it to children and pay for it.
I felt it was a bit of a knee-jerk to the loss of enrollments to the private sector and the idea that parents were seeking 'values' in their choice of school.
I agree that if there is a need for counselling it ought be given by counsellors - not quasi-priests. If parents want their children taught values it should be done in the home.
As for society at large, I don't think it can be seriously denied that much of what we enjoy, including our most basic freedoms, have some root in our religious heritage. At the same time I think that much of what we enjoy today is also the result of religious ambivalence and particularly non-sectarianism.
Anyone who believes that the promotion of one ideology over any others has never felt what it is like to have a minority viewpoint.

abortion, anxiety, feminism, broken families and broken hearts...all the things that are real in fact....they are real things based on the real experience of living, as opposed to the completely insane fantasy of faith in some (any) god. you christians..you leave me and my children alone please, because i think you are all deeply ill and need a great deal of help, and i am afraid i do not have the patience or the qualifications to help you...so just leave me and my children alone....build your churches (and your temples)..pass round the collection plate, clasp your hands in supplication if you so desire, someone will get round to helping you eventually...not me. i would like you all to leave me, my government and my children and their school alone please. i did not vote for you, you have no right to force me or my children to do or believe in anything. it is the secular societies that have managed to sustain democracy, democracy is far more important to me that the insane rantings of very sick people.

"The Green Left view of everything is much more dangerous than religion, which is easier to see through at a time when most of its sensible practitioners no longer believe in the myths and fears presented by religion in past times. The Greens are spoilers and wreckers who want to change the face of society and economic principles that work, to the grey, depressive existence of socialism." so spoke Leigh, who by his/her words sounds like a full-on evangelical fundie with Coalition tendencies, along with Tony Abbott's global view on the need to continue taming the world and suppressing 'nature', all as part of God's good work.

I could be wrong, but this is such a distorted view of Green thinking, that it has to belong well past the One Nation wheelbarrow, and deep into the mind-field of Senators Barnaby Rubble and 'Albert' Fielding, the two Isaac Newtons of the Red Leather Room.

Clearly Leigh does not place the Pope as one of the 'more sensible practioners', not 'Houston calling' from Hillosng, nor the Jensen family of Sydney, nor.... most of the US political scene.... there isn't much left on the Xtian side of life is there? Oh yes, I forget Tony Blair, always sensible our Tony.

Maybe Leigh was thinking of the emerging Russian mix of church and state, who are having another run at forming as toxic a brew today as they had when the Czar was in town last?

But Truthnow78 is right, what with all those RI 'helpers' and Tim Costello's World Vision Christian missionaries let loose in Qld schools by an uncaring and politically focused Premier Bligh, they are doing a lot of volunteering, in our state schools with the support of the State Government.

I suspect, that if the author Danny here took along a group of Greens members to discuss the relative merits of 4WDs with the students at his daughters school, he'd be shown the door as a political opportunist, a mind distorter no less, imposing 'political values' on the kiddies.

But what if God was to say that?