ABORIGINAL Dreamtime stories, originally included in the Science Curriculum of Mr Rudd’s proposed National Curriculum, are to be removed.

Year 4 students were to hear “historical examples of different cultures, knowledge about the national environment and living things, for example, Aboriginal peoples’ Dreamtime Stories, that explain significant characteristics of the Earth’s surface and interactions between living things”.

Professor David McGaw, of the Curriculum Assessment Authority, says the Dreamtime stories must go — he hadn’t realised they were included in the science course until seeing media  reports last week:

“I’m a science graduate and a former science teacher. Dreamtime is a religious or spiritual interpretation of the beginnings of life. It shouldn’t be in the science curriculum, and we’re going to take it out. For the same reason, we wouldn’t let Intelligent Design or Creationism be included.”

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Will Professor McGaw, in fairness, be deleting Evolution – another “religious or spiritual interpretation” – as well?

This blog has no beef with people wanting to believe in “evolution” . . . as explained on March 3.

In fact evolution is obvious – provided we stick to what the word “evolution” means in English — i.e. “a gradual process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex form”, or more literally, “an opening out of what was rolled up”.

It’s some of the atheistic, agnostic, anti-God tit-bits, that evo-fans sneak in as part of the supposed meaning of “evolution”, which make the term suspect as part of a science course.

Professor McGaw said schools will be free to teach Dreamtime stories, Intelligent Design etc., in other classes, such as religion. Does not most of what usually passes as “Evolution” merit similar relegating?

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Meanwhile it’s going to be hard to stop people doing what they’ve always done — to look at the night sky and say, “Yes, I believe in a Creator who made all this – and who is a rewarder of good and a punisher of evil.”

As the Bible says, going back 2500 years at least, “The heavens show forth the glory of God, and the skies announce what his hands have made. Day after day they tell the story. Night after night they tell it again.” (Psalm 19)

Mr Rudd says Australia’s new education system will be “back to basics”.

More science, more mathematics, more history?  

Nothing “basic” about that.

More basic to ask: “Do these children know how to behave themselves?”

And: “Do they know why they should behave themselves?”

Leading to the truly basic questions:  “Is there a God? What has God put us here on earth for?”

Postpone increasing maths/science/history. Boost religion classes.

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The questions above are answered on one single page of your Bible – in Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Romans:

“The just man shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and injustice of those who suppress the truth of God: because that which is known of God is manifest . . . for the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity: so that they are inexcusable . . . .”

(comment: Godliness (religious gusto) is basic to justice, and the two of them are basic to everything worthwhile — so obviously so that there’s no excuse not to know it)

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 “Not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law. For when the Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature those things that are of the law; these not having the law are a law to themselves: the law written in their hearts . . . .”

 (comment: Even people not brought up knowing any religion know right from wrong. Woe betide educators who twist young minds into “rights/self-esteem” mentalities)

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“For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God. Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus . . . .”

(Comment: Every child must learn the supreme importance of what the Church offers, especially Baptism, Holy Communion and the Sacrament of Confession)

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If you doubt that your local school will teach your children these basics, don’t send them.

In today’s Australia, a decision to send a child to school is a grave decision. Perhaps the normal/default practice for thinking parents should be home schooling

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In 2001, Islamic terrorists declared war on Western nations by destroying New York’s World Trade Centre.

In 2002, the UN Commissioner for Human Rights (a Catholic) said Islam is “entirely consonant with the principal of fundamental human rights and . . . bestowed rights upon women and children long before other civilisations.”

In 2008, the President of France called Islam “one of the most beautiful civilisations the world has known.”

In 2009, the President of the USA spoke of his “deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world – including my own country.”

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It is intrinsic to the aims of Islam that ultimately all nations bend to Sharia law.

Non-Muslims are to be given the traditional three choices: (1) convert to Islam, or (2) die, or (3) become second-class citizens in one’s own nation, subservient and tribute-paying (they call it “dhimmitude”).

The Commissioner and the two Presidents quoted above seem to have volunteered themselves into dhimmitude without a struggle.

Everyone seems to be doing it — the rate of Westerners converting to Islam having supposedly doubled since 11/9/2001.

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The only other alternative — that Muslims start converting to Catholicism — seems a long way off.

But we had better start making it happen soon, or it is going to be a very sad world indeed.

Where can the much-needed historical U-turn begin?

A good place would be in Catholic schools.

Let’s teach Catholic students that non-Christian religions are NOT good.

Let’s teach them why.

Let’s teach them how to understand their Faith — how to argue the case for Catholic belief – how to be living role models of the good that God can achieve in lives devoted to his obedience.

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Let’s be willing to die, by all means.

But let us NOT be ready to sell ourselves to those who despise our weakness.

Recent research indicates a link between boredom and early death.

Based on questionnaires completed by 7,500 London civil servants aged 35 to 55 in the 1980s: those who reported being bored at work have subsequently died of heart attacks at over double the rate of those saying they liked their jobs. (International Journal of Epidemiology)

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A quote from Pope Benedict XVI: “We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism . . . which has as its highest goals one’s own ego and one’s own desires . . . the church needs to withstand the tides of trends and the latest novelties.”

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To hear a child say, “I’m bored,” is a frightening thing. We hear it all the time. We don’t know what to do.

The temptation is to be blackmailed — to give children even more of the very “trends and novelties” which are white-anting their souls.

Must their lives centre forever around the shopping mall and what can be bought there or shoplifted there?

See them practising at being little middle-aged robots. See them “hanging out” in the mall with like-minded, unprogrammed automatons — bored, bitter and meaningless already.

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We educate them in the technological questions of “how?” Secular education ignores and lampoons all questions of “why?”

The answer to questions of “why?” ultimately relate to God.

Love for God is what could save them – and us.

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Another beautiful quote: “O God, my love for you ought to be total, infinite in desire; because you will not give yourself entirely to a soul unless it gives itself wholly to you. I must not cling to any attachment, nor admit even a single voluntary imperfection, nor refuse you anything . . . .

“Seeking sacrifice in the smiling acceptance of suffering, O God, for love of you, I want to take advantage of the little opportunities, so that I may be strong in the big ones.”  (Sister Carmela of the Holy Spirit)

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Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, a key day in the Christian year, a day to begin in earnest to mentally approach Good Friday, Easter and all that they mean.

They mean everything.

More about that tomorrow.

Young Australians are exposed to unremitting attempts to destroy their consciences.

Television, internet, magazines, fashion, music — all desensitising them to alcohol, drugs, violence, extramarital sex, underage sexualisation and encouragements to be greedy.

School subjects are distorted to be more of the same, presenting a worldview where every facet of life is a power struggle.

Notions of virtue — of right and wrong — are sacrificed in the cause of making children consumers, mentally conformed to a feminist-dominated society.

It starts before the child can stand up — parked in front of the television at home, dropped off at a child-care centre — day after day learning that the world is a place in which mummies work.

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A step towards sanity might be for more children to learn history.

Properly taught, history shows a child that the world was not always like this.

The world does not, therefore, have to continue being like this.

There was once a world where you didn’t have a mobile phone.

A  world where you respected your parents.

A  world where you could leave your house unlocked.

A world where it was normal to commit yourself life-long to a husband/wife before using them sexually.

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In this world, there occurred the resurrection from the dead of one Jesus Christ — a real, historical, eyewitnessed, event.

The eyewitnesses included Peter, the fisherman-disciple, who ran to the graveyard that first Easter morning, finding, not Christ’s dead body, but an empty tomb.

Jesus then appeared to Peter and others — alive, talking, eating, still bearing crucifixion wounds.

Before the crucifixion, Peter had denied even knowing Jesus — a coward, wanting to save his skin.

Shortly after, Jesus ascended to heaven, leaving Peter (of all people) head of his Church.

They preached in Jerusalem and throughout the world.

Many were themselves killed by God’s enemies — the only way to silence him.

If Christ’s resurrection wasn’t true, just a yarn they had invented, would they have died rather than deny the message?

But the resurrection is true — the greatest thing ever to happen — in a different league from any other event.

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Meanwhile, back in 21^st century-land, that kind of history is not discussed in the media or in polite schools.

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With all the debate over the government’s My School website, it’s interesting how much the debaters  have in common – and how wrong they have all got it.

The media quote a “Christian College” principal — one of those criticising schools being awarded rankings based on students’ test results.

“A school is far more than a test,” he said, “A school is what takes place in a classroom, what takes place socially preparing kids for later in life, building their self-esteem.”

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What? Why bother having a so-called “independent” school — in this case, an allegedly Christian one — if its spokesman happily conducts conversation about policy in social-worker, agnostico-comfy jargon?

“Self-esteem” means pride — exactly what a Christian College must, by definition, be trying to eradicate from the students’ mentalities.

“Preparing kids for later life”, he says. What later life? Is God, in fact, going to give these children a later life? How about preparing them for Judgement Day? That’s something they are definitely going to have.

Less preparing the students to fit in nicely in materialistic junglesville — and more Confessionals — that would be the way to go for those liking to be called “Christian”.

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Again, we could learn much from Mother Mary MacKillop, who, back in the 1800s, ran her schools as though top priority was making students capable of keeping God in the centre of their thinking all day long, every day – as well as making sure they could read and write.

That is what education has to do, unless we want to keep on churning out further generations of ambitious, me-first, individualists.