jason's picture
Wed, 20/09/2006 - 10:45am — jason

I congratulate Maralyn Parker on a frank assessment of the problems that religious schooling will cause to social cohesion.

I believe choice policy is the single factor contributing most to the growth of Christian fundamentalist and Islamic schools in NSW and Australia.
If we want to divide Australia and witness the growth of religious bigotry we just need this trend to continue.

She is not specifically targeting Christian or Islamic schools but is generally concerned with both. Some figures on how many of these schools currently operate in NSW:

51 mostly small fundamentalist Christian schools whose teachings include creationism and hatred of homosexuals.
13 mostly small Islamic schools
13 very small Brethren schools where true believers do not use computers (outsiders are employed to teach mandatory computer studies so Brethren will not be tainted).

Great. So how do you think the students of these schools will operate in the wider community? And do you think many of the students would pass a values test?

Maralyn ends with another call to arms for public, secular, education:

I would love to see our Prime Minister show his belief in Australian values by ploughing money into help building a strong, quality public school system.
A move like this from Mr Howard would be the best investment we could ever make for Australia’s future.

Here, here.

But would the Coalition act against their own best interest to support such a move?