From The Sydney Morning Herald
A confident secularist society would tolerate school religion
By Brendan O'Neill
July 28, 2011
Opinion
"Were we 'indoctrinated', turned into Catholic drones? Were we hell."
Photo: Michele Mossop
Can a half-hour chat about God really warp children's minds? Listening to Australia's increasingly irate secularists, you could be forgiven for thinking so.
They have upped the ante in their war against ''special religious instruction'' in public schools, depicting it as the modern-day equivalent of a Christian crusade arriving on horseback to convert young Aussies to a lifetime of Bible-bashing.
It's worth reminding ourselves that special religious instruction, where church volunteers teach children about religion, doesn't take place in all public primary schools. And in those schools where it does, it only takes up half an hour a week - far less time than the average kid spends pretending to kill people in video games or being preached to by SpongeBob SquarePants.
Even the most fervent nun or red-eyed pastor would struggle to indoctrinate children in such time-restricted weekly hook-ups.
That is the word most commonly used by secularists opposed to special religious instruction: indoctrination. They believe, as a Sunday Age report summed it up, that these lessons are ''designed to convert, not educate''.
The Commonwealth Ombudsman demanded this week that the federal government clarify when a chaplain crosses the line, from teaching kids about Christianity to trying to convert them to it.
Full Article: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/a-confident-secularist-society-would-tolerate-school-religion-20110727-1i04k.html
Regrettably, this is yet another piece that blurs the lines between the issues of the NSCP and scripture classes in state schools.
