Religious teaching in public school creating culture struggles

Schools are a site for ‘cultural struggle’ (Wadham, Pudsey, Boyd, 2007 p.4) This point is clear in the article Student’s caught in culture war crossfire in the Sydney Morning Herald (2011), which describes the conflict after the Government boosted funding to the National School Chaplaincy program designed to place religion classes in all public schools. This has created debate about the identity issues this plan proposes within Australian schools. Australia is an increasingly multicultural country and it is conflating ‘Australianism’ to Christianity is not the norm in modern day society.  The article raises concern, particularly in Victoria, with the volunteer’s strong Christian views that “without Jesus, our students are lost” (Measham, 2012). This concern is with focusing on predominantly white Anglo Christian ethics and the monocultural identity it promotes.

This Australian identity of ‘whiteness’ directly conflicts with Ho’s idea of creating ‘micro publics’ (2011, p.605) out of schools, as a site for cross cultural exchange. The author of the article expressed doubts to whether the initiative would succeed in promoting Christianity as the major ethical teaching in public schools, and therefore cultural identity, as it insults the intelligence of students to blindly follow available teachings. I think that whilst it is true that students should be able to separate religious teachings to their own ethics one of the biggest reasons the initiative would fail to ‘save students through Jesus is that “substantial portions of public school students (50 per cent and more) are from language backgrounds other than English” (Ho, 2011 p.606). The public system is culturally and ethnically diverse, therefore religiously diverse. It is not viable to think that the Anglo-Saxon, white identity of students is the predominant culture, and therefore Christian teachings would influence them greatly in public schools. This lends to the theories in Wilding and Hawkins exploration of ‘Whiteness’ (2009) with “whiteness…and assumed rights to power” (p.184).

My argument which stems from this article is not obliterate Christianity teachings in public schools, an idea harbored by the Victorian Teachers union, (2011) but the need to diversify religious affiliation in schools to end culture wars pertaining to different religious faith. Identity politics needs to be strengthened in schools through Cosmopolitan learning. Reid and Sriprakash (2012) communicate a push in schools attending to “socio-cultural differences”(p.17), to create greater cultural connectivity and understanding. A diversified program of religion, highlighting the teachings of many denominations is an example of this.

Resources:

Reid, C. Sriprakash, A. (2012) ‘The Possibility of cosmopolitan learning: reflecting on future directions for diversity teacher education in Australia’, Asia- Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, pp16-22

Ho, C 2011, ‘Respecting the presence of others: school micropublics and everyday multiculturalism;, Journal of Intercultural Studies, pp605-611

Wadham B, Pudsey J, Boyd R (2007), Culture and Education, Pearson Education Australia, pp. 4

Measham, F. (2011) ‘Students caught in the culture war crossfire”, National Times

Available at: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/students-caught-in-the-culture-war-crossfire-20110516-1ep92.html