It is 222 years since the French Revolution established the principle of the separation of church and state. It is three months since Cyclone Yasi and the Queensland floods ripped $9 billion from our national economy.
In Australia we have an ostensibly secular and progressive government, which also claims to be fiscally prudent. It’s just blown $220 million on a program which is offensive to the principle of state independence from religious influence.
The reason: having avowed her atheism, Julia Gillard is now desperate to appease the Christian lobby. As such, one of the biggest new spending measures in what was unconvincingly billed as a tough-minded post-disaster budget will see chaplains running about in 3500 public schools, filling kids’ heads with what many people regard as fantastic nonsense.
The measure is outlined on page 33 of Tuesday’s Budget Overview document under the headline “Making Every School a Great School.” Speaking from personal experience, the headline jars with the reality of what these school chaplains provide.
My daughter finished up last year at a fantastic K2 (kindergarten to grade two) public school in Sydney, where she and other students were taught what was called scripture once a week. Being a fairly ambivalent type of atheist, and one who is uncomfortable with the derisive atheism of writers such as Richard Dawkins, I didn’t think scripture classes would necessarily be a bad thing, provided they served as a generalised kind of religious education which also provided some familiarity with the Bible.
My presumption was wrong. Most of what was taught in these classes was absurd, framed around the conceited dogma that it is impossible to become a good person unless you believe in God, and choose the right God to believe in. None of this was the fault of the school, which like so many others has no involvement with the “services” external chaplains provide.
Their evangelical mindset was best evidenced by the exercise books the kids were given, which on one page asked students to put a tick (for good) or a cross (for bad) next to drawings of children who behaved in certain ways.
There was a girl who always packed her toys away. Tick. There was a boy who used bad words. Cross. There was a boy who prayed every day. Tick, apparently, because as we all know, any kid who doesn’t pray to God daily is destined to burn in eternal hellfire, and it’s important that children know this from the age of seven.
It is probably more important that from the age of seven every student reads well and has a good grasp of numbers. At a time when many students can do neither, the $222 million would be better spent on specialised teacher positions, added features for the MySchool website, more Smart Boards, books, sports equipment – or not spent on anything at all.
What is also important is that the Federal Government respects the rights of parents who have selected a secular education for their children. Religion should be a private choice. The chaplaincy program places it in a public setting. It means that parents who are troubled by the idea of some unknown vicar waffling on to their kids about the almighty and the afterlife must decide whether they want their children to take part or not. They have to choose between the rigmarole of explaining to their kids why they’re being excluded from a class most other students are attending – or just shrugging their shoulders and letting their kids go anyway, even if they think it’s a meaningless waste of time.
Another flaw with the system is that the chaplains are laughably instructed to avoid sermonising but to talk in general terms about concepts such as kindness and charity and issues such as bereavement. This approach is in direct opposition to the training they have received. The entire basis of their work is theological. It’s like asking someone with dental training to work as a general practitioner.
One of the strongest critics of the chaplaincy program is former NSW Premier Bob Carr who has attacked the scheme on his excellent blog, Thoughtlines. I spoke to Carr yesterday who was disappointed and angry that the Gillard Government had chosen to extend the scheme.
“I think it is indefensible that all taxpayers are required to support a program that is gradually becoming church evangelism,” he said.
“There is enough feedback now to show that quite understandably chaplains cannot confine their activism. Evangelical work is their lifeblood and it’s naïve to expect them not to pursue it around young people. They can’t because of their training. They can’t approach these matters from any other perspective.
“As a result we have got breaches of what should be a very thick wall between church and state.”
Carr is dead right. Conservatives who deride state schools as being valueless, and regard the chaplaincy program as an attempt to introduce some values into the state system, are besmirching public schools and denying the rights of parents and children. State schools already teach values – kindness, tolerance, sharing, working for charity, helping the less fortunate. They should continue to do so in a manner devoid of religion.
It’s a private choice for parents who send their kids to those schools as to whether they want to bring their children up in a religious framework outside of school, or not expose them to religion at all. The Government shouldn’t be making that decision for us, especially at a time when it’s talking about fiscal restraint. As the French revolutionaries would say this is one program which should be put to the guillotine.
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