ACCESS MINISTRIES has sent an email out to all schools. Some schools are printing this in their news letters ... our comments are below with ** We have a very educationally sound curriculum in which the education department have every confidence. **This is false - the education department do not approve or even review this material. It is routinely updated and changed by ACCESS acting as their own reviewer - it has no independant seal of approval and individual church groups have complained about it, and many respected theologians have said it is rubbish. DEECD does not have any role in this, contrary to what parents are told and what ACCESS implies. It is prepared and written by practising State trained teachers and all have theological training. **This is a meaningless claim - the term theological training is meaningless and no state authorized group has or will endorse this as a curriculum. It is based on the Victorian VELS standards and advice is received from leading Educators. **There is no connection between the VELS this is patently false. (see review by Zyngier). We believe that SRI adds real value to children and the wider school community, for the following reasons: 1. Under legislation each faith group is able to share the tenets and beliefs of their particular faith; in our case Christianity. **The legislation makes it possible for schools to allow this, but does not obligate them to offer it. ACCESS depends on the perceived endorsement of DEECD 2. Spirituality is part of our overall human development and Christian Religious Education creates a safe space for discussion of the spiritual dimension of life; **The use of the term spiritual obfuscates the plain purpose of this program to inculcate a particular kind of religious perspective. The classes do not advocate nor anticipate discussion in any meaningful sense, the lessons all have objectives which are defined by the tenets (dogmatic) beliefs of the instructors. (see review by Maddox above). 3. We live in a religious world (many faiths), and to ignore this is to limit understanding of the world around us; **In what way to we live in a religious world? We live in a modern, secular democracy, which rejects the idea of establishing any religion and which actively affirms religion as a matter subject to personal privacy protections, and which takes a very suspicious view of using religion as a criteria upon which children are sorted in our schools. If there is knowledge that children need to understand the world around us then that knowledge should be taught like any subject and not presented on a confessional way by teachers who are selected based on their willingness to affirm that one religion is the true one, while others are not. 4. Parents exercise freedom of choice by choosing whether or not to enrol children in SRI; **When the school timetables an activity, and asks parents to let them know if they want to withdraw their children - this is not freedom of choice this in effect allowing families to avail themselves of the status of conscientious objector and to be a dissenter from a normative program - most parents trust and follow what they see as the schools recommendation. Parents also are free to do anything they want - putting this in the curriculum is not freedom of choice it is co-opting an institution to advance the interests of one faction. 5. CRE exposes children to our heritage, the history of the influence of Christianity and the values it promotes in the character of our nation and western society. **This statement is highly misleading, and not supported by the curriculum in any meaningful way. There is almost no discussion of our nation or western society in this material, the ways in which Christianity has influenced history are not discussed at all. To claim that this program does this is blatantly false. For example, one might ask does this material teach about the relationship between Christianity and our flag? That would be a fairly basic example of material that covers the Christian influence on our nation - and one most parents would be happy for our kids to learn. Certainly no one would object to this kind of teaching. But to do this, one would have to discuss different historical graphic representations of the cross and show how the are combined onto the modern flag, and one would have to discuss the names of the Saints for whom they are named and the association of those figures with cultural groups within the United Kingdom - none of this is in the material that they teach. IF YOU HAVE SEEN ACCESS PRINT THIS IN YOUR SCHOOL NEWSLETTER LET US KNOW
Posted on: Wed, 05 Mar 2014 10:25:54 +0000
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