I looked up the Safe Schools program. It is a national program to protect homosexual students from bullying.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald the program helps schools stamp out homophobia and celebrate diversity through moves such as same-sex formals, gay-straight student alliances and expanding reading lists to include books with gay and lesbian narratives, including “Brokeback Mountain” and “Stone Butch Blues”.

Whether or not Roz Ward who designed the program is a Marxist it seems a good program with a good purpose, and her Marxism seems completely irrelevant.

According to the same Sydney Morning Herald article the National School Chaplaincy Program conflicts with the Safe Schools Program. “Some chaplain providers have been linked to homophobic views, and critics claim the government's decision to scrap funding for secular student welfare workers is directly at odds with its funding of the Safe Schools Coalition, to be rolled out nationally on Friday”.

Since I think religious indoctrination has no place in the public schools and protecting all students from harassment is a proper function of any school I think it would be good if the chaplaincy were scrapped, and the Safe Schools program were implemented everywhere.

Is it so that in Queensland there are more homosexual students who could benefit from the Safe School program, than there are Christian students who could benefit from Chaplaincy? More importantly do the two programs have to clash?

Does homophobic include being against same sex marriage? Then a few decades ago most everybody, including atheists, were also homophobic. And that at a time when homosexuality was accepted as a fact of life and discrimination - at least in theory - did not exist anymore (at leat where I lived).

I have not seen the Safe School program; my knowledge of it is only second hand.
However, I would think the Chaplains are nor against protection of LGBT victims of bullying but against gender ideology as presented e.g. in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Butler. The same as a century ago they were not against the proletariat that was exploited by the capital but against dictatorship of the proletariat.

David, your thoughts are in accordance with mine on this. We (society) often concentrate on the negative aspects of our education system and fail to give real encouragement to the positives.
A little feel good positive project in schools I was reading about is the 'Solar Buddy' program, where Queensland school students are making a simple but potentially life-changing difference in the lives of their peers around the world. Students make solar reading lights for children in developing countries.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-24/solar-buddy-lights-off-made-queensland-students-off-to-png/7649964

david f,

That subject could easily hijack this thread.

Suffice it to say that the program is highly contentious. See here for example,

http://billmuehlenberg.com/2016/03/17/seven-things-you-must-know-about-the-safe-schools-program/

It would be wrong to suggest that objections were limited to religious institutions - which was an oversimplification anyway by the program's advocates.

Following concerns from parents and the public generally, an independent review was conducted and amendments have been recommended.

OLO has had at least one article and a long discussion devoted to the subject and recently.

I will leave it at that.

Hi David,

When you write

" I think religious indoctrination has no place in the public schools and protecting all students from harassment is a proper function of any school .... "

I would go further and suggest that NO indoctrination of any sort has any place in ANY schools - public or private, Christian , Buddhist, Callathumpian or Moslem.

[Your second suggestion goes without saying, but there would already be a host of mechanisms to do that, such as teacher vigilance.]

I'm surprised: don't you think it may be possible for good old-fashioned Marxist indoctrination to go on, under the guise of other programs ? Is it possible that such indoctrination has already happened elsewhere in the world ? How did that work out ?

Cheers,

Joe

Dear George,

Parents who want their children to be religiously indoctrinated can send them to religious schools which get government subsidies. They can also teach them of their religion at home or send them to their religious institution for such instruction outside of school hours. Public schools are meant for all children, and no child should feel excluded. When there are classes in religious indoctrination those children whose parents do not wish them to attend those classes either have their wishes ignored or have their child excluded. Neither is good. The chaplains are ubiquitous. They lead sports programs and other activities. They are supposed to neither proselytise nor counsel since the schools should be religiously neutral and, in general, the chaplains do not have the training to counsel. However, they do both. In Queensland almost all chaplains are hired by Scripture Union and in Victoria almost all chaplains are hired by Access Ministries. Both are Protestant fundamentalist. To be a chaplain one must agree by abide by the principles of SU or AC. Since those groups have as one of their aims to proselytise it is reasonable to expect the chaplains hired by them to do so even though such activity is supposedly prohibited. As Ron Williams wrote it is like sending in the clowns and asking them not to be funny.

Since you are a Catholic I doubt that you would care to have them in charge of any child of yours. The Queensland education Act of 1873 specified that public education be free, compulsory and secular as they wanted all children to receive a secular education. There were also religious schools not funded by the state for parents who chose them. In 1910 the Queensland Bible Society succeeded in getting the word, secular, removed from the Education Act. The Catholic Church opposed removing that word; apparently because it did not want the public schools to be a happy hunting ground for Protestant proselytising if the word was removed. Their fears have been proven justified.

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