Ethics classes in primary schools – the right thing to do
In 2010 the New South Wales government gave students who did not attend scripture classes in public schools the legal right to attend philosophical ethics classes as an option to non-scripture classes. That ammendment to the Education Act has been challenged by the Christian Democratic Party and is now being re-examined. Leith Brooke, from Primary Ethics, revisits the ethics classes debate.
On Friday 11 November the NSW Legislative Council resolved to conduct an investigation into ethics classes in NSW State Primary Schools. It did so as part of the NSW Government’s response to the Rev Fred Nile’s call for the abolition of these classes as a condition of his ongoing support for the Government’s legislative program.
Primary Ethics was established by St James Ethics Centre to deliver ethics classes to schools. In our first year of operations and with extremely limited resources, we have already recruited, accredited and trained over 400 skilled and highly motivated volunteers who are serving in over 150 schools.
The level of community engagement and the 3500 students that have elected to join our classes provides us with a great sense of validation of our program. It should also be noted that this has been done with minimal adverse effect on the provision of classes in Special Religious Education – with the vast majority of students attending ethics classes being drawn from amongst those who had previously elected not to attend scripture.
We respect the right of Parliament to conduct inquiries on behalf of the people of NSW. We also have great confidence in the quality of our curriculum and our training resources, and in the high calibre of our volunteer teachers.
We can’t help but feel a sense of déjà vu. In 2010 the Department of Education completed a thorough trial of ethics in schools. This trial involved ten schools, leading Australian academics and a high degree of community consultation. Of the 750 submissions made, 730 (97%) were in support of the introduction of ethics. As a result of this, on 1 December 2010 the NSW Education Act 1990 was amended to give students the legal right to attend philosophical ethics classes.
We thought the battle had been won. We’d really like to get on with the job and focus on our goal: to provide children with a lifelong capacity to make ethical judgements and to act reasonably and responsibly.
We are committed to continuous improvement and expect that the parliamentary inquiry will assist in this process. We hope that this can be achieved without imposing too great a burden on our fledgling organisation, which relies so heavily on the good will of the community to make up for the limited financial resources at our disposal.
Just today we have had contact from several new schools across NSW asking for ethics to be introduced to their schools so we are delighted that the recent wave of publicity is having a positive effect on some.
We thank the community for its ongoing support and engagement. In the end, it is our capacity to responsibly meet the needs of children and their parents that remains the single most important test of our program’s value.
Leith Brooke is the Executive General Manager of Primary Ethics, an organisation founded by St James Ethics Centre in 2010 to deliver ethics classes to NSW state primary schools. She has worked in the not for profit sector since 2001, at Belvoir St Theatre and the Art Gallery of NSW where she ran the business development units. Previous to this she worked in marketing roles for Volvo Car Corporation in Australia, UK, Belgium and Sweden.
Douglascomms
November 23, 2011 at 9:17 pm
Ethics classes in schools
Hey theLeith ,
I’d like to see this taken one step further and have ethics classes replace scripture altogether.
The notion that people of faith be allowed to ply their trade in schools where we’re attempting to instil a modicum of reason into our kids is totally abhorrent. Moreover the underlying ethos of the public school system which is thatALL CHILDREN are welcome regardless of colour, belief system or income is a far more valuable and worthy moral foundation for our children than anything dished up in the exclusive religious schools which reject kids according to their own whims and prejudices.
I would love for an ethics program to be made available at our local primary school, as it is my kids have wandered in and out of most of the different scripture classes because they like the stories – but have now decided to spent their time in the hall reading books (more stories).
And I might remind Nile and all his compadres that there is not a single Christian school in Sydney which follows the teachings of Christ and opens their gates to all of God’s children, and that that good Samaritan which is a story central to the Christian ethos – was neither Christian or Jewish – but simply a good person, which is what we want our kids to be as well.