The following comment just breaks our heart … right across Victoria this is going on.  ACCESS Ministry, make no mistake:  This is going to stop.

 

Re: Religious education in government schools

Our family is in quite a bind. Our eldest daughter has started school this year. With neither my wife nor I being religious we chose to send our daughter to the local public school. Late last year we were surprised to find the school had a religious education class and so we asked about what this was about. We were told that it wasn’t really a religious class, but rather a class about morals.

We were shocked to find this year once our daughter started in the school that it is very much a full-on religious indoctrination class with bible readings, talks about God and Jesus and prayers. The school itself is a very small country school with only a few pupils in each level, there are only 6 in the prep year.

We want to opt out, but we were told that our daughter would be the only one and she would be separated from the rest of her class. For a small sensitive little girl this would be akin to punishing her and excluding her from her peers in such a small town could have unwanted affects. I was told that other parents who were not happy with the religious education class have in the past opted-out, but they then found their children were being made to feel left out by the school community so they reluctantly let their children back into the class.

This really is completely unacceptable in this day and age. I have no objection to parents choosing to have their children taught religious education, and they are welcome to seek this out as they see fit. My issue here is that not only is the religious education effectively forced upon our children, but the make-up of the religious education in our community is solely decided upon by a Christian lobby group.

Tony, 5 May 2011, Year P – Rather not say