The Atheist Foundation of Australia strongly condemns the decision by Federal Education Minister Christopher Pyne to attempt to politicise the Australian Curriculum. His appointment of a two man review panel of Kevin Donnelly and Ken Wiltshire does not bode well for the quality of Australian education.
Donnelly has stated “Australian education has become too secular, and the federation’s Judeo-Christian heritage should be better reflected in the curriculum.”
The National Curriculum has resulted from a long process of collaboration, review and agreement across all of the states. This broad stroke white wash of this work in the attempt to inject political ideology and a greater infiltration of sectarian religion into the curriculum is disgraceful. If religious education is to be included in the National Curriculum, it should be in the form of a comparative religion class which outlines the origins, practices and unsupported claims of a variety of religions.
In the 2011 census, the “no religion” category became the second largest single demographic and trends indicate that it will soon be the largest. The Atheist Foundation of Australia would recommend that the Federal Government do not attempt to inject a greater focus on sectarian religious education into the curriculum. This development is disturbingly similar to attempts in the U.S.A. to rewrite history in favour of an extremist conservative narrative or attempts to allow anti-science into the science curriculum which attack biological evolution, cosmology, geology and climate science.
Michael Boyd
President
Atheist Foundation of Australia Inc
PO Box 1062
Lane Cove NSW 1595
Phone: (08) 8835 2269
Email: [email protected]
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