Religious Curriculum needs to be reviewed at Australian schools

I read an article on The Age this morning. It has reflected a priest's idea from InterAction, a multi-faith youth network that includes most religious, atheists and agnostics as well, about a review of current religious curriculum at Australian schools.


His first point is that at schools religious education should be broader than instruction in one belief system. He argues that there ought to be general religious curriculum that introduce children to the ideas, motivations and rituals of the ethos of all religious. The current approach to religious study is that primary students at government schools must attend special religious instruction classes which run by volunteers for half-an-hour a week. Although other religions including Judaism, Islam, Baha'i are also accredited to run courses, the majority of courses, almost 96 per cent, is provided by Christian education provider. That is one side of the argument that Catholic priest Father Bob has pointed out.

Further more, Father Bob also has emphasized religious instructors should lead open-ended discussions that drew no conclusions. He believes that parents can help children to find it instead. The problem with proselytizers is that they try to convince students to believe in God. Given an example of an army chaplain during the Vietnam War, he said the importance of teaching soldiers about honesty and truthfulness, without infusing religion into character training, had been impressed on all chaplains. Overall, Father Bob suggets that a "jolly good idea" for Australia to have community schools rather than denomination specific schools.

To summary, Australian religious eduction requires to be reviewed to teach the ethos of all the religions in its curriculum and avoid giving students a clear opinion that they must believe in one. I agree with this view. In my opinion, that is a general rule in life that can also apply for this controversial topic. It states that you have to get to learn about one another before you can live with one another.