Funding of religious schools
Recently Bob Johnston, the Executive Officer of the Australian Association of Christian Schools, was asked to participate in a public debate on the subject of ‘Should taxpayers be funding religious schools?’. As Australian (and particularly New South Wales) readers will know, there has been quite a sustained attack on the funding of non-government schools—particularly ‘religious’ ones—over the last few years.
With Bob's kind permission, I have posted his notes for this debate on our website. They provide an excellent critique of not only the flawed philosophical assumptions behind this attack, but also a helpful outline of the true facts and figures on government funding—facts which are often distorted for political purposes.
Here's an extract to whet your appetite:
- Public education, while defined in the Act as ‘secular’ in nature, is far from neutral in matters impacting beliefs, moral standards, interpretations of curricula, selection of course content, the values orientation of policies, etc.
- While state school advocates might claim that they are not influenced by particular creeds or religions, they are nonetheless influenced by philosophical axioms that more or less define the worldview within which they unpack the complexities of life and nature embodied in the curricula.
- Philosophically, the worldview that is commonly promoted and modeled within state education lies somewhere in the mix of Secular/Scientific Humanism, Naturalism, Utilitarianism, Deconstructivism and Post Modernism.
- It's a composite worldview that, while not religious per se, stands in the place of religion in that it positions itself both formally and informally on the same metaphysical questions that major world religions address: Does prime reality begin with matter or God? Is life autonomous or created? Is nature random or ordered? Are humans complex biological machines or image-bearers of God? Is morality just a social and cultural convention or an extension of the character of a good God? Is the end of history in the lap of chance or the eternal purposes of God? and so on.
- The worldview that is therefore promoted in state schools clearly positions itself as a substitute for religion.
- Its advocates claim the intellectual high ground simply on the basis that they are not religious.
- I find this a curious logic and a convenient blind spot in their raison dêtre.
- Is there an hypocrisy going on here? For one belief system (for that's what it really is) that remains largely unexposed to public scrutiny appears to be okay to be publicly funded, yet another, that is open to any who care to examine it, is not in the public interest and certainly ought not to receive public funding.
- Let me ask again: isn't this a double standard and isn't it time it was exposed for what it is?