Turning Points: Christian and Secular Battlelines in the History and Present of Queensland Education (original) (raw)
Related papers
Journal of Religious Education, 2014
Since the mid-1990s, there has been a sustained growth in religious schooling in Australia with an accompanying debate over its merits. In turn, these debates in the realm of education are framed by broader questions in ostensibly secular-liberal nations like Australia over the ‘new visibility of religion’, most prominently in the spectacle of religiously-framed terrorist acts. The conjunction of this geopolitical context and the local debate over religious schooling focalised in the 2007–09 protests against a proposed Islamic school in the Sydney suburb of Camden, which have triggered a renewed emphasis on the importance of the secular principle in schooling. In this two part paper, I posit that the notion of ‘the secular’ is not a principle per se, but a strategic term deployed within particular political situations. I approach this through a genealogy of how religious and secular schooling have come to be understood as they are in New South Wales. Part I considers how the geopolitical and domestic political context of the present debate compares to that in the lead up to the formal separation of religious from secular schooling in 1880.
Merely different, or, why the rise of religious schooling in Australia is not radical
"There has been a period of sustained growth in religious schooling in across Australia generally and with it, an intense and at times polemical dispute has swirled (e.g. the proposed Islamic school in Camden, Sydney, in 2007). This is perhaps unsurprising for education is commonly supposed to concern some of the most cherished ideals of contemporary liberal societies, not least rational and critical thinking as ‘gifts of the Enlightenment,’ freedoms of choice, belief and values, the qualities of citizenship like tolerance, and the desired ends of education like academic standards, entry to tertiary studies, employment and prosperity. In this paper, I offer a discourse analysis of the relationship between the neo-Calvinist schooling movement as a particular case of religious schooling in Australia within the context of the institution of a market for school choice under a neo-liberal regime. What the latter effects by means of various ‘technologies of government’, I shall argue, is not a rise of religious schooling that is expressed and embodied substantively such that it opposes the secular public sphere, whether this is taken to be a positive or dangerous development depending on the side taken in the debate along the secular/religious line. On the contrary, what is actually produced through schooling is a muted religious discourse that is driven from the public domain into the realm of private preferences, and for which the label of ‘domesticated belief systems’ appears apt. In being domesticated as such, religion as expressed in religious schools are considered acceptable – and indeed, their new visibility is celebrated as an expression of a ‘multi-cultural society’ – as long as they adopt the commodity form for sovereign, autonomous and freely choosing consumers.""
Administering Secularization: Religious Education in New South Wales since 1960
This paper examines the development of religious education policy in the government schools of New South Wales (Australia) since 1960. The New South Wales religious education curriculum features three components: (1) teacher-led “general religious education” (gre); (2) right-of-entry denominational instruction provided by visiting clergy (“special religious education”, or sre); and (3) occasional additional devotional exercises such as hymns and prayers. Between 1960 and 1980, this system underwent a partial secularization. gre was transformed from a straightforward course in Christianity built around government-produced Scripture readers to a flexible curricular component built around the academic study of multiple religions. At the same time, sre was strengthened and had its position in the curriculum secured; and devotional exercises were allowed to continue only in those settings where they formed an “appropriate” match with the community. I find that “secularizing” reforms were most consistently driven by teachers and administrators with practical motives: avoiding controversy, improving working conditions, and facilitating class management. This finding both challenges and complements recent works that interpret secularization as a political process driven by politicians and professionals primarily interested in enhancing their power or prestige at the expense of religious actors.L’article porte sur l’évolution de la politique d’éducation religieuse dans les établissements scolaires publics des Nouvelles Galles du Sud depuis 1960. Trois volets : l’éducation religieuse de base dispensée par un maître, le droit pour les dénominations d’offrir un cours spécifique dispensé par un prêtre ou un pasteur, et enfin les expressions circonstancielles, hymnes et prières. Entre 1960 et 1980 une sécularisation partielle a remplacé le catéchisme avec manuel officiel, par un cours flexible d’introduction scientifique aux diverses religions. Les enseignements dispensés par des ministres d’un culte ont vu leur place dans le curriculum consolidée. Ces réformes ont été conduites à partir d’un point de vue pragmatique et dans un souci d’harmonie. Elles vont à l’encontre de l’idée selon laquelle sécularisation irait nécessairement avec idéologie antireligieuse et luttes de pouvoir.Dieser Beitrag erörtert die religiöse Erziehungspolitik in öffentlichen Schulen Neusüdwales seit 1960. Drei Aspekte werden beleuchtet: der von einem Lehrer erteilte Religionsunterricht, das Recht einer besonderen Unterweisung durch eine katholischen oder evangelischen Pfarrer und schließlich gelegenheitsgebundene Ausdrucksformen, wie Hymnen oder Gebete. Zwischen 1960 und 1980 hat eine Teilsäkularisierung zur Abschaffung des Religionsunterrichts mit offiziellem Unterrichtsmaterial geführt, der durch einen flexiblen Unterricht mit einer wissenschaftlichen Einführung in verschiedene Religionen ersetzt wurde. Der jeweils von offiziellen Vertretern einer Religion erteilte Unterricht wurde im Weiteren verstärkt. Sowohl pragmatische Ansätze als auch Harmoniegedanken haben zu diesen Reformen geführt, die widerlegen, dass die Säkularisation hautpsächlich ein politischer Prozess sei, der von Politkern und anderen Akteuren geführt würde, um ihre eigene Macht oder ihr eigenes Prestige auf Kosten der Kirchen zu stärken.(Online publication June 03 2011)
Journal of Religious Education
In Part I, I canvassed the geopolitical and domestic political context surrounding the debate over religious schooling in Australia, with particular attention to the legislative response to the spectacular Islamist terror attacks, its divisive effects on Australian society and its focalisation in the 2007-9 controversy over a proposed Islamic school in Camden. I also considered the proposal of the secular principle in schooling as a solution to such disputes. Adopting a genealogical approach, I sought to historicise the meanings of ‘secular’ contra ‘religious’ education via a detour to 19th century New South Wales politics, which was marked by sectarian tension and British Protestant prejudice against the Irish Catholic minority in the context of spectacular Fenian terrorism. In Part II, I will specifically foreground the political contestation in NSW surrounding the institution of the 1880 Public Instruction Act and its persistent effects on the religious versus secular education debate today. The point advanced here is that the very terms ‘secular’ or ‘religious’ cannot be defined except as historically contingent outcomes of political battles and power relations.
Secularism, race, religion and the Public Instruction Act of 1880 in NSW
History of Education Review, 2019
Purpose Through a political genealogy, the purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the institutionalisation of the so-called “secular principle” in NSW state schools in the late-nineteenth century, which is commonly assumed to be a historical moment when religious neutrality was enshrined in public education, was overdetermined by the politics of racialisation and ethno-nationalism. Design/methodology/approach The historiographical method used here is labelled “political genealogy”. This approach foregrounds how every social order and norm is contingent on political struggles that have shaped its form over time. This includes foregrounding the acts of exclusion that constitute any social order and norm. Findings The secular principle institutionalised in the NSW Public Instruction Act of 1880, far from being the “neutral” solution to sectarian conflict, was in fact a product of anti-Catholic sentiment fuelled by the racialisation of Irish Catholicism and ethno-nationalist anxieties about its presence in the colony. Originality/value This paper makes clear that “the secular” in secular schooling is neither a product of historical and moral “progress” from a more “primitive” state to a more progressive one, nor a principle of neutrality that stands outside of particular historical and political relations of power. Thus, it encourages a more pragmatic and supple understanding of “the secular” in education. It also invites both advocates and critics of secular education to adapt their arguments based on changing historical circumstances, and to justify the exclusions that such arguments imply without recourse to transcendent principles.
(2014) Introduction: Rethinking Secularism in Australia (and Beyond) - Journal of Religious History
One of the chief aims in the papers making up this Special Issue is to start a conversation on the relationship between the secular and the religious in Australian history; that is, was it generally a relationship of mutual exclusivity, as so many accounts of Australian history presuppose, or was it much more porous and reciprocal? In this way the following papers are an attempt to come to grips with the complex nature of a specifically Australian secularism; a secularism that borrowed from the radical French Enlightenment as well as more religiously open Enlightenments of Britain and America, all the while creating a discourse suitable to a collection of British colonies and then a nation. This Special Issue questions the dichotomy between the secular and the religious and shows that the two are inextricably linked conceptually and, indeed, historically.