The intrusion of scripture programs into public schools is contributing to religious-based bullying, the Rationalist Society of Australia has told an inquiry.
In a submission to the federal education department’s Anti-Bullying Rapid Review last week, the RSA urged governments to examine how scripture programs – such as the Special Religious Education (SRE) program in New South Wales and the Religious Instruction (RI) program in Queensland – contribute to bullying.
RSA Executive Director Si Gladman said parents had, over the years, raised a common concern that such programs resulted in non-participating children becoming the target of religious-based bullying.
He said children were being teased that they would be “going to hell” or that they were “not from the right religion”.
“We urge the Anti-Bullying Rapid Review to investigate the extent of religious-based bullying in government schools due to the intrusion of scripture programs and other religious activities taking place in schools,” wrote Mr Gladman.
“Such programs segregate children based on religious lines, making it easy for children to identify who among their peers are, for example, from Christian households, from non-religious households, or from minority religious traditions.
“Promoting segregation based on religion is corrosive to social cohesion and is completely at odds with the values of secular public education.”
The submission also noted that the New South Wales’ Department of Education had recently launched an investigation into allegations that Hindu scripture program indoctrinates children into caste-based discrimination, including by seating children according to caste hierarchical order.
Under the Anti-Bullying Rapid Review, two co-chairs will make recommendations to education ministers for the development of a consistent national standard for responding to bullying and its underlying causes in schools.
As the RSA reported last week, the New South Wales government has begun awarding public schools for “building social cohesion” where they segregate children according to the religion of their parents as part of SRE.
In recent years, the RSA has raised concerns with the New South Wales government about the teaching of “hellfire” and warnings about who to be friends with in Islamic SRE, and the teaching of anti-science materials in Christian SRE.
In Queensland, Christian RI providers have viewed the program as a mission opportunity, publicly stating that they sought to “harvest hundreds (of children) for the Lord” and “disciple” them.
The Rationalist Society of Australia is actively lobbying for secular reform of scripture programs in public schools. Follow our campaign here.
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Si Gladman is Executive Director of the Rationalist Society of Australia. He also hosts ‘The Secular Agenda’ podcast.