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Religion and ethics to be discussed for the national curriculum

1:57pm Monday, 21st November 2011

Joshua Maule

If it were to be taught effectively, a religion and ethics component in the national curriculum would need to be more than a simple description of practises and beliefs, says Dr John Collier.

The Chairman of the Association of the Head of Independent Schools in NSW and the ACT also says it is vital religious schools remain free to teach "adherence" - not "indoctrination" - to a particular religion.

Responding to a Fairfax Media report that religion and ethics would be discussed by Barry McGaw and the board responsible for the national curriculum, Dr Collier expressed mixed feelings.

While he says it would be a "social good" for students from a multicultural society to take a course in comparative religion, it would be from the "phenomenological school" of religious study which doesn't deal with key aspects of religious belief, such as acceptance and faith.

"For those of us who are Christian, we'd be wanting to say, we don't want to see the Christian faith presented as an equal amongst a range of alternatives. But beyond that we would want a different kind - an additional kind - of Christian education available," he said. Dr Collier says that it where Christian schooling comes in.

While he believes the proposal is "probably" better than the status quo, he says it would be a challenge for teachers without religious affiliation to explain faith accurately. But they would need to.

"Just as a Christian teacher who's teaching ethically won't set up a straw example of Hinduism or Islam in order to blow it away easily, I would want any course to be robust in looking at religion."

Education columnist David Hastie supports the concept of including religion in the national curriculum. "I think Australia is kidding itself if it thinks it's a secular nation. I think we need to describe ourselves a post-secular nation - that is, a pluralist nation."

"Secularism is far too narrow, and far too extreme to explain what we have in Australia. And we need to start reflecting that in our education system."

Hastie says students particularly in state schools can miss out if religion is treated as a "non topic".

But he doesn't believe the necessity of "non-adherence" teaching in state schools is a problem. "Students don't necessarily agree to adhere to maths. They don't necessarily agree to adhere to English. But we give them the tools by which they might engage in various ways."

NSW Greens MP, John Kaye says his party does not support the teaching of religion, "we support teaching about religion".

"Because religion interacts with faith, and faith is a difficult commodity to quantify, it is difficult - there's no question - to explain religions, many of which appear to non-believers as quite irrational."

"But what is important here is that people understand the role that religion played in the development of the morality of a society. And in terms of understanding where a certain society is at, religion plays an important part of our history."

"There's a long tradition of teaching that in secular public education."

"Some people might say that you can't talk about a religion without the faith that goes with it, but those people are effectively saying that you can't talk about a religion without being a believer. And I reject that idea completely," Dr Kaye said.

Fairfax Media reports suggest religion and ethics will be included in a national curriculum discussion paper next year.

Twitter: @JoshMaule