Australian Atheists Sent to Detention Room During Religion Class

What the hell? That needs to stop.

That’s really odd, considering it’s a country with an openly atheist President.

Not cool. Granted, I’d rather have detention than religion class, but still.

But I’m proud of that kid who walked out after the bs about curing gay people.

Okay. Can we send the Creationists to detention during Science class?

Please don’t get the wrong impression – ie: that this is widespread. It seems to be a case of not enough resources in one school. This story is from ABC Illawarra – a local news page for a region on the NSW south coast, just south of Sydney – probably big news because nobody’s budgie had escaped that morning. I would not have even heard this happened if not subscribed to this blog via RSS.

Of course, it’s horrible that this happened to one student. That is one too many. Still I’d keep an ear out for other cases across the state before grabbing our torches and pitchforks. It’s definitely a NSW ethics class issue.

Pfft, the atheist kids actually go to those classes? I only started going on threat of suspension. If I had wanted to put up with the teachers shouting at me for not showing up, I don’t think I ever would’ve gone.

In Year 12, the classes turned into a joke – it was nothing more than free period with a teacher to grumble at us. Maybe I just got the mostly-atheist class every year, but nobody ever paid attention, and the teacher was lucky if half of the class showed up.

At most schools, students don’t take it seriously and the classes are a joke. We’d be better off if all RE classes were banned and kids were given an extra PE lesson.

Non confessional RE classes is a good thing. But that is not whats discussed here I gather.

I’m more or less from that region (the budgie has been found, flawedprefect!). In most High Schools around here the scripture lessons are held at the end of the day, and anyone not participating (a vast majority) go home early.

It’s up to the Principal how the week is structured, and these schools were acting against policy. They’ve been told to clean up their act.

The situation is different in Primary schools, where Scripture occurs during the course of the day. We had to draw our daughter’s Principal’s attention to the policy, because she was placed out on the verandah and told she couldn’t do her homework during that time, even though the policy suggests homework as a suitable activity.

Anyway, the good news for us here in NSW is that Ethics classes will be offered as an alternative to Scripture. The opposition, who are likely to win government at the next election, had vowed to scrap them (they were trialled last year), but they’ve seen sense: http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/nsw-opposition-backs-down-on-ethics-class-20110203-1aehh.html

Huzzah!

These incidents are not pervasive and there a quite a number of people concerned enough to challenge the school and Department.

Of more concern is the National Schools Chaplaincy Program, which successive Governments have pumped almost $500 million into. The program effectively excludes trained secular professionals in favour of religious people. This is a clear violation of Section 116 of our Constitution, which is our equivalent of the Establishment Clause.

For more information see this article, and the High Court challenge.

When I was in primary school, we just sat in the same classroom with the people who had opted to do the religious class, but we were allowed to play on the computers instead. My best friend and I would giggle to ourselves as we heard them talk about Noah’s Ark and other stories. Most people whose parents wanted them to take the class were quite jealous, and probably would have loved to play games for the lesson instead like we were.

But now that I look back on it, it’s a little weird. The whole point of opting out of religious classes was pretty much useless with that setup. We were probably a couple of meters from our normal desks, listening to what the instructor was saying (and occasionally recieving icy glares from them.)High school at least we were sent to the library, but again, it was a useless waste of time that we could have spent preparing for exams.

I noticed though that while there were only two or three non religious in my grade in primary school, the library was pretty much full of us in high school.

The ethics classes sound good. Well anything that pisses off the ACL sounds good. They’re probably just afraid people will choose them over RE.

In primary school we had RE or RI, can’t remember what they called it. You didn’t have to do it, although I did to get out of some other class. You could say that was the first time I realised how silly religion was.

Also, when I was in high school (public) some guy came and all of my year level were put into a room and he was ranting about religion (Christianity) and handing out little Bibles to everyone (it was a little red book, lol). You weren’t forced to take it, some kids of other faiths declined.

As an Australian, this is embarrassing and ridiculous. I think we’re doing pretty well in terms of religion, but then you get shit like this?!
Atheists being sent to detention may be an isolated thing, but the reality is kids all over the country in secular public schools are being indoctrinated into Christianity be default.
And unfortunately, the ethics classes in NSW (which are at least a legitimate use of time) will be abolished by the Coalition.

Both my parents have taught at Nowra High for the past 30 years and that story sounded extremely fishy to me. I’ve been out of school for a couple of years, so I just asked my mum about it.
While Christian scripture classes are a part of the timetable for all students (it’s an opt-out system rather than opt-in, as in all of the public schools I’ve experienced), all students are free to opt out at any time, including atheists. Those students are sent to the library for individual study, or if there are enough of them, to a separate classroom with separate supervision.
When I opted out, I was allowed to study unsupervised in the library, as was everyone else.
Having said that, the scripture teacher in question is undoubtedly a nutter (she was my teacher throughout primary school and some of high school, and does things like attempt to baptise children in class, or wash their feet, etc), and a student may have clashed with her and gained a detention that way.

I’m an Australian atheist and have never heard this story before, despite reading a LOT of stories online from Aussie atheists and how we handled school religion. I would say it’s most likely a one-off. Each school gets to choose how they treat children whose parents opt out of the RE classes. Having said that, it is unacceptable.

Personally, I went to a public school in rural Victoria. My parents opted me out, and while the rest of the class had RE classes, the other kids and I got to play with all of the toys, go on the play equipment, play with the (very rudimentary) computers etc. RE class was my FAVOURITE time of the week because I got to play while the religious kids had to sing stupid hymns and do work! We thought we were so lucky not to be forced into classes. We used to snicker at them when they sung songs about how jesus loved them. We were never punished or treated badly, the teachers were really good about it.

The problem with the fact that it is not nationally regulated is that you can have these contrasts. Aussies are significantly more laid back about religion than other countries, so religion in schools is unlikely to become a national issue enough to push for regulation. It ends up being the parents’ role to fight it on a school by school level.

@flawedprefect and others.

There seems to be a misconception among atheists in British Commonwealth countries (among whom I count myself) that there is some sort of Establishment Clause in our constitutions. In fact, (somewhat ironically) the ‘separation of church and state’ is pretty much an American constitutional concept.

For Australia, and New Zealand( where I live) our head of state (the Queen) is constitutionally bound to religion – in Australia her offical style starts “Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God Queen of Australia’ and in NZ it starts in a similar way – in fact constitutionally church and state are united at the highest level!

Luckily, the de facto situation is that we seem to be more secular, and have much less interference in secular matters by the religulous than in the the USA with its constitutional ban on such matters. However, there is no contitutional separation of church and state in Australia, or in NZ.

Roll on the Republics of Oz and NZ with a written constitution sorting out this issue is all I can say!!

I saw a documentary about rampant drug-related crime on the streets of the United States. People were being shot daily!

Is that true? If so, how are Americans letting this sort of treatment continue?

Oversimplification is bad. But I think Hemant suspected things weren’t so simple when he asked for more information in the last sentence. The excellent comments here will have helped. 🙂

I don’t know what other student’s experiences were with primary school RE lessons, but for me, they were pretty lacadaisical. In public schools (what I spent the length of my primary and secondary education in), RE is dependent on available (Christian) volunteers that hold a blue card (permit to work with children) that could handle being mocked and ridiculed by classfuls of 10-year-olds. For this reason, in my schools at least, there was lots of chopping and changing of RE teachers, and all we really did was listen to religious stories and learn sign sign language that went with Christian music. Students who opted out of these once-every-couple-of-weeks sessions went behind a screen and continued with their maths lesson (for some reason, math always preceded RE…I can’t think why >.>). When I hit high school, RE completely dropped off the radar except for the mandatory ‘some people believe different things’ talks in health ed and biology classes. (On a side note, can you believe we had a fundie in our biol class!? Who mocked me incessantly for saying that dinosaurs existed!?)
Most private schools in Australia, on the other hand, are religious (and claim to promote tolerance and diversity in their cohorts.) These schools have mandatory religion lessons complete with homework and assessment pieces. Although the lessons do spend a bit of time discussing different world views, they come from a Christian perspective and spend the majority of its time bible-bashing. Additionally, not completing these assignment pieces carries with it the same weight as any other subject – failing, decreased Overall Position (a good OP is vital in my state for university offers), detentions and eventually suspension or expulsion.
Another issue is that private schools, which do not receive any government funding, do not need to conform so closely to the national standard for curriculum (x amount of hours of math per week, y English, z physical education etc), which results in depleted time allocated for core subjects because RE is such a significant subject.
Now that I’ve got all that out, I’m going to post! And probably realize that I’ve missed out sixteen things I wanted to say :P.

As already mentioned The National School Chaplaincy Program is to be challenged in Australia’s high court as unconstitutional.

The program is NOT mandatory. It’s voluntary. Nonetheless it’s influence is prevalent within the school system.

My sister who lives a few hours from Sydney started an alternative class with other parents in their local Primary School. They call it Myths and Legends. Parents and Citizens take turns each week to teach all kinds of interesting non-curricular knowledge. Within two years 80% of the kids now attend the class instead of scripture.

For those concerned, the School Chaplaincy Program us now under review by the Department of Education. From today they are taking survey submissions (I assume from Australina residents only) to help determine the future of the program.
The following link is a document download that includes the Survey and in-depth background information.

http://www.deewr.gov.au/Schooling/NationalSchoolChaplaincyProgram/Documents/NationalSchoolChaplaincy_DiscussionPaper.rtf

Submissions will close 18th of March. Put the word out there!