Post by tolpuddlemartyr on Aug 6, 2011 6:31:34 GMT -5
In the latest in official idiocy from the Australian government and its state-funded religious indoctrination instruction. Time is set aside for unqualified religious "instructors" to teach on the school timetable. If you say that you are an atheist or not of that religion the education department has a solution it's called cutting class self-directed study.
I don't know whats worse, wasting valuable school time with this crap that directs the kids away from learning useful stuff from qualified professionals or the bureaucratic bullshit-speak of naming exclusion and wasted time "self directed study".
The Victorian Education Department is vigorously fighting a case in VCAT brought by three parents who claim their children are "excluded from their peers, bored, self-conscious and, at times, very upset" because they opt out of religion classes in three different state schools.
They claim the department discriminates against their atheist children by forcing them to leave the classroom while religious classes are taught for about half an hour a week.
In a statement of defence obtained by the Herald Sun, the department denies the children who choose to opt out of the classes suffer a detriment because they are segregated from their peers.
Under the rules, students who choose not to attend religion classes - which are mostly taught by volunteers from the Christian evangelical Access Ministries churches - must formally opt out and leave the classroom. They are not allowed to undertake the normal curriculum during this time, although new guidelines mean they may undertake self-directed study.
But parents claim children are being sent to other classes, left alone in corridors, placed at the back of the classroom without any work to do, and are refused the right to work on classwork. Some children who are opted out by their parents are anxious and upset about being excluded, their VCAT claim states.
The parents also claim the classes contravene the Equal Opportunity Act, the Cultural Diversity Plan, the Human Rights charter, and the principle of secular state education.
They claim the department discriminates against their atheist children by forcing them to leave the classroom while religious classes are taught for about half an hour a week.
In a statement of defence obtained by the Herald Sun, the department denies the children who choose to opt out of the classes suffer a detriment because they are segregated from their peers.
Under the rules, students who choose not to attend religion classes - which are mostly taught by volunteers from the Christian evangelical Access Ministries churches - must formally opt out and leave the classroom. They are not allowed to undertake the normal curriculum during this time, although new guidelines mean they may undertake self-directed study.
But parents claim children are being sent to other classes, left alone in corridors, placed at the back of the classroom without any work to do, and are refused the right to work on classwork. Some children who are opted out by their parents are anxious and upset about being excluded, their VCAT claim states.
The parents also claim the classes contravene the Equal Opportunity Act, the Cultural Diversity Plan, the Human Rights charter, and the principle of secular state education.
I don't know whats worse, wasting valuable school time with this crap that directs the kids away from learning useful stuff from qualified professionals or the bureaucratic bullshit-speak of naming exclusion and wasted time "self directed study".
