The Australian budget this week  increased money for school chaplains in government schools by $200 million.

Enemies of school religion classes are now on the warpath, accusing the agency which organises chaplains and voluntary religion teachers – ACCESS Ministries – of “proselytising”.

Victorian lawyer, Andrea Tsalamandris, intends taking ACCESS before the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

Because children whose parents stop them attending religion classes aren’t given schoolwork to do while those classes are on, Andrea T claims they are being “discriminated against”.

Or is it she who favours discrimination – wanting those attending religion class to be disadvantaged by missing out on the lessons given to religion-non-attendees during religion class time?

* * *

This debate could go on forever.

The contenders live in two different universes.

A universe where there is no God isn’t something a believer can easily visualise.

So communication is difficult.

It’s tempting for the believer to fall into a trap — the trap of seeking to explain their mission using the lingo familiar to secularists.

ACCESS CEO, for example, told the media that her organisation has “no interest in converting people of other faiths”.

Yet aren’t they motivated by loyalty to Christ who told his apostles to “go and make disciples of all nations”?

But she isn’t deliberately lying or deceiving.

To her, the existence of God is an objective fact.

So presenting that fact to young people isn’t proselytising/brainwashing etc. – it’s simply giving the child a chance to live in the real world.

* * *

Many government school children will grow to be believing adults.

Including many not brought up religious at home.

One big influence being contact with teachers who are Christian, and who live consistently with the love taught in the Gospel.

Many regular class teachers, uninvolved with formal religion teaching, can have that effect.

I certainly was influenced by such teachers, who, while trying to teach me physics etc., imparted by their good example spiritual truths by which I now hope I can live my life.

The Humanist Society of Victoria is taking legal action against the Victorian Education Department, claiming that Government school students who opt out of religious instruction classes are being discriminated against.

At present, Department guidelines state that opting-out children may not do other schoolwork while religion classes are being taught.

You could perhaps call that “discrimination”, I suppose . . . .

But the Society’s real aim isn’t ending discrimination, but ending teaching of religion altogether.

In one metropolitan school (Hawthorn West Primary) a parent did move to end religious instruction at the school – a bid which failed.

But he achieved what he was really after.  The school has set up a “working party” to assess the community’s views on religious instruction.

Another tactic has been to (unsuccessfully) try to squeeze religious instruction into time slots outside normal school hours.

* * *

Most Victorian Government schools have religion classes (half an hour per week) taught by a total of 4000 volunteers.

Children must attend unless their parents decide to opt out – an arrangement established by the Victorian Parliament in 2006.

The lessons are about Christianity — geared not only to providing information, but to encouraging children to have an opinion.

* * *

Many staff teachers favour religion classes, but they cannot teach religion themselves.

Other are anti, making the volunteers’ job difficult.

The stated attitude of the Australian Education Union is kind of neutral: “There is a place for comparative studies of religion in the curriculum, but ultimately we consider it a private matter for parents and their children”.

Australia’s federal opposition leader, Tony Abbott, wants Bible studies in a national schools’ curriculum: “Everyone should have some familiarity with the great texts that are at the core of our civilisation. That includes, most importantly, the Bible.”

Saint Mary MacKillop taught that all education should be religious (Catholic) and based on God.

She said she was “daily more and more convinced of the evils to their faith to which Australian children are exposed on account of the wicked secular education that is now general.”

The new “My School” website detailing statistics about all Australian schools, including their funding, has been on the Internet for two days now.

Big numbers of visits have been made to the site.

Already there are complaints about factual errors on it.

That was bound to happen.

What they are claiming to be trying to do on this site cannot be done.

The whole project seems to be a distraction.

* * *

The basic philosophy of education in Australia needs to be revisited and changed.

But it won’t be, despite all the talk about transparency, empowering parents etc.

This blog complained yesterday that there is no public debate about what education is actually trying to do.

If we are headed in the wrong direction it doesn’t really matter who is paying the fare.

* * *

This is where pioneer Catholic educator, Mother Mary MacKillop, in the 1800s, was light years ahead of today’s educators.

Her priority was not to corner more government funding.

Her priority was to ensure that her schools received NO government funding.

The original Rule of her Order said that their schools “may never receive aid in the way of fixed salaries from any Protestant government and that, should any Catholic body or Board desire to fix certain salaries upon the schools, they be not allowed to receive such.”

Instead, the Sisters went begging in the streets and from door to door.

Their needs were few. The teachers were unpaid volunteers (nuns) and the buildings simple (they started in a converted stable).

* * *

Today we need to get back to a similar mentality.

Church schools with unpaid teachers are still desirable for both spiritual and practical reasons.

To be able to offer Australian children an education free of contamination by government ideologies, we would need large numbers of priests, nuns and brothers.

Paid staff simply will not do.

About 700,000 Australian children attend Catholic schools today.

Surveys show that less than 5 percent of young Catholics aged 16-25 attend Mass regularly . . . .

Which suggests that our current government-funded “Catholic” schools are a failure.

Yesterday at 10am the federal government’s new My School 2.0 website appeared on the Internet.

It differs from the previous My School site by detailing the sources of financing of every school. 

Schools Education Minister, Peter Garrett says the new site is an opportunity for “deep discussion” about education . . .  and “a good thing”.

Opposition Education spokesman, Mr Pyne, says the site is designed to provide excuses to cut government funding to non-government schools . . . which he considers would be a bad thing.

Teachers’ Union mouthpiece, Mr Gavrielatos, happy with the prospect of destroying non-government schools, criticises the site for not being brutal enough.

* * *

Although seeming to differ, these three gents are all on the same side – the wrong side – of the debate.

All assume that the most important thing about education is money.

Despite talking about “deep discussion”, Mr Garrett ensures that the debate will be utterly superficial.

All about who pays for education.

Nothing about what education is for.

Nobody asks what are we trying to do to a child when we “educate” him.

Or what is education?

Or what (for that matter) is a child?

The assumption is that education is “good” if children score well in a “Literacy And Numeracy” (NAPLAN) test.

Yes, it’s handy if students learn to read and write . . . .

Or is it?

It depends on what they end up reading and writing.

If their reading and writing doesn’t lead them to God, then all we have achieved is a generation of literate robots.

More on this subject tomorrow.

Last week many Australian parents received consent forms to fill in re their daughters being given Gardasil, a vaccination against HPV, the virus causing cervix cancer.

About a quarter of girls in the age group, mainly 12-year olds, are not taking up the offer.

Cancer Council Australia is launching a program aimed to recruit more takers.

But some parents resent the government’s presumption that their daughter is incapable of abstaining from sex until marriage.

And government interference in what they consider a strictly family matter.

Others aren’t worried – just getting their daughters done because it seems the “safest” thing to do.

* * *

There are some worries about the safety issues — reports of girls developing seizures after Gardasil. Some have even died.

It’s all a bit hard to assess.

Some people oppose every kind of vaccination — depriving their children even of Whooping Cough vaccine etc. That’s a view this blog does not support.

What makes Gardasil special is that HPV spreads ONLY by promiscuous sex.

* * *

Even if could be proved, as the Cancer Council claims, that Gardasil-injected girls are not more prone to have sex . . . .

Even then its use would make thinking parents uneasy.

The point — a bit subtle perhaps — is that the widespread use of this vaccine reinforces a notion, even among those not having sex themselves, that unmarried sex is “normal”.

* * *

Acting immorally, even thinking immorally, is more harmful that cervix cancer.

Are we more than just robots?

Is there more to life than just doing whatever we feel like, and getting away with it for as long as possible with the help of technology, good luck etc?

If there is, then our eternal future depends on whether we obey God’s laws. Including his laws about sex.

We are going to be dead a lot longer than we are going to be (physically) alive.

The New South Wales Opposition says that, if elected in March 2011, they will increase funding for drug rehabilitation programs.

Health spokeswoman, Jillian Skinner, says that part of their agenda will be to develop a “methadone exit strategy”.

The number of people addicted to methadone in NSW has risen to 19,500 — an increase of over 50 percent in the last ten years.

Jillian Skinner says, “What we have done is to replace other addictions with methadone addiction.

“Methadone was always intended as a short term strategy to stabilise their lives so they could get into other treatment.”

* * *

It has been known for at least 15 years that methadone maintenance doesn’t work.

Workers at Melbourne’s Odyssey House were telling the media back in 1996 that methadone programs were “creating more  addiction than they were curing”. Among methadone-users they interviewed, not one had stopped using heroin. (Herald Sun, 24/1/1996)

We should be shutting down all clinics etc. claiming to “treat” addicts.

We should stop treating addiction as though it were a medical condition. If there must be rehabilitation programs, let them be compulsory and legally supervised.

Addicts aren’t victims of forces acting outside them. They have the power of making choices.

Addicts prefer to surround themselves with people who will cover up for them, give them money or even — in the case of some perverse governments — give them supplies of the drugs that are destroying them.

* * *

Addicts seek the company of anyone who will listen to them repeatedly telling how hard life has been to them.

These people need, on the contrary, to learn about and experience, the consequences of actions.

For example, if you spend all your money on drugs you will have no money.

If you steal money to fund drugs you will be put in prison.

The best way to help addicts is to make the connection between actions and consequence as direct and unmistakeable as possible.

* * *

It is also important that the general public be helped to realise that “drug withdrawal symptoms” are mostly in the mind.

That the seriousness of withdrawal symptoms, medically speaking, is such that the strongest medication a person needs to get through them is something like Panadol.

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