Saturday Magazine

10 Apr 2014

Former education minister calls for end to religious education

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Former education minister calls for end to religious education

Former Victorian Education Minister Bronwyn Pike has said that religious education “has no place in our secular school system”, calling on churches to find other more constructive ways to participate in communities.

Speaking on this edition of Saturday Magazine, Ms Pike said that while years ago she would have supported the idea of religion in government schools, she has “been on a bit of a journey in this area.”

“I grew up in a very religious household, and my Sundays consisted of virtually the whole day of going to Sunday School, and youth groups and all of those sorts of things. And in-fact I worked for the church, and for many years was a church attender”, Ms Pike told today’s host, Macca.

“The body that runs our Christian education in schools at the moment used to be much more representative of the mainstream religions, but now is overrepresented by the more conservative, evangelical sections. The more conservative fundamentalist groups, I think, are embracing a very discriminatory view. And I think anything that promulgates those kinds of views in our society are wrong. And I’m very concerned”, she said.

“Some people send their kids to those schools because they don’t want them to mix with the riff-raff that’s in the public system. That’s not a Christian value…. The very schools that say they are religious are by their very being entrenching un-Christian values.”

Ms Pike cited a recent incident in Torquay involving material handed to year 6 children that claimed girls who wear revealing clothes are inviting sexual assault, and that homosexuality, masturbation and sex before marriage are sinful.

“A lot of the different kinds of relationships that we have in our society are not fully understood and appreciated because we only hammer the traditional male-female nuclear family model in our schools”, Ms Pike said.

“A lot of gay and lesbian people would like to ensure that people in education understand complex different relationships.”

The former MP clarified that while she understood the importance of spirituality and the different forms it takes in places around the world, she believes that Australia is now a pluralistic society, and no one group should have the right to promote their particular set of religious views.

“If the churches believe that they have a message that is worthwhile, then there are many opportunities in the rest of our society for them to express their faith”, she said.

“There’s lots of ways that you can express your Christian faith and show acts of caring and love to people in the government school system without needing to have half an hour a week to basically ram religion down people’s throats.”