Religion - and Education !

The law in New South Wales demands that every school sets aside at least a thirty minute period each week for " special religious education " ( SRE ) and until 2015 this choice was an option chosen by parents when their children were enrolled.   It took the form of ticking one of two boxes to decide between SRE - or instructions based on " Ethics " !

In many schools a proportion of students were enrolled in this SRE option and those whose parents opted out simply had a free period, in which they did their homework or amused themselves by reading books.  It became very apparent that many kids implored their parents to free them from the chore of attending SRE.

When that permission form was revised in 2015 the box pertaining to " ethics " was deleted and replaced with a statement urging parents to contact the school about information on alternatives, including " ethics " when this was available. There was a groundswell of resentment that this former clear choice was now masked by a need to take both time and effort to resolve the issue.

Australia is a country with a wide diversity of religions.  In the earlier part of the twentieth century the main religious divide was between Catholic and Protestant, but today school children may belong to a wide variety of the worlds religions and there is usually no clear indication of what form SRE  is going to take.  It is hard to see how religious instruction can encompass the divide between Christianity, Islam and the many Asian religions now widely practised in Australia.

The form SRE takes seems to be the choice of the principal and many try to choose widely and obtain a speaker capable of delivering matter that would be uncontroversial and generalise rather than promote any particular religion.  Often, the relationship between religion and ethics covers similar ground.

Comparison between education standards in the worlds schools is not kind to Australia.  We are below par and slipping further and many think that is because our curriculums are loaded with extraneous matter more conducive with social objectives than education.  By world standards, we have a short education day and perhaps that thirty minute period dedicated to religion could be better used to strengthen areas where improvement is urgently needed.

Religion is a personal choice by each individual in Australia and many religions run schools in which that particular religion is exemplified, but we are careful to keep the public school system secular.  The census shows that religion is a decreasing interest in the general community and many will now question why it should intrude into teaching time when it has no application to educational objectives.

In the past, religion education was specifically served by the churches running Sunday schools before the main church services.  These specifically taught the dogma that pertained to that religion and was usually a duty of the priest in charge of a church district.  Now is perhaps an apt time to determine if religion still has a place in our public education system.