Removing the 'faith' from faith-based schools

The state is a political entity. The state does not determine what is good and what is evil. That is the province of the “higher authority”, who has set the bar for what is right and wrong.

To have the state dominate all education is to politicise education. Politicising education makes education of the young the tool of the state. Such education becomes subject to the state’s political preferences, ideologies, and dogmas as it propounds its own currently convenient politics, morals, and values. Such monopolising of education initiates the process of morphing a society into the dystopia of Huxley’s “Brave New World”, and Orwell’s “1984” at the “Animal Farm”.

For this reason, it has always been appropriate to separate the defining of morality and that of good and evil from the responsibility of the state.

Should the Commonwealth accept the ALRC’s recommendations, all schools will be required to conform to the state’s legislated, secularist, neo-Marxist view of the world - a worldview devoid of spirituality, religious beliefs and objective morality.

Removing faith from faith-based schools, removes difference and dissent to the state’s promulgated educational point of view. It disintegrates the possibility of there being another worldview, independent of the state.

Historically, formal schooling in Australia was initiated by Christian churches. They were committed to carrying out their God-given mandate by delivering to the colonies’ children the gifts of literacy, numeracy, and knowledge, and to present decency and morality to the upcoming “currency generation”. The Anglicans, Presbyterians, Catholics, Lutherans, and the various “dissenting” religious groups brought schooling to this nation. The state later played the role of educational catch-up, with the advantage of using public funds, to establish its own system.

In 2023, the state’s latest ploy via the ALRC is not simply to play catchup, it is set on a seek and destroy mission. Its aim is to eliminate the competition.

Education and schooling are for the physical, intellectual, social and spiritual development of children. It is not a toy for the state to dominate and manipulate towards soft, neo-Marxist ends. Real educational alternatives must be available for parents to choose from, as they are the ones responsible for the raising of children.

The ALRC’s inquiry into faith-based schools has made recommendations that will remove the genuine faith from faith-based schools. The recommendations, if accepted, will extinguish the essence of what makes a faith-based school distinct from secular schools. The ALRC has made an outrageous, direct attack upon the school system that has been a successful part of the Australian educational landscape for 225 years.

The Commonwealth should reject the ALRC’s deplorable attempt to destroy Australia’s faith-based schools. In terms of a “fair go” the Prime Minister should call into question the legitimacy of the Australian Law Reform Commission.