The New South Wales Premier has intervened to push through a trial of Ethics classes run during time normally devoted to Special Religious Education (Scripture) in Government primary schools. Dr Bryan Cowling, the Director of the Anglican Education Commission reflects on the Premier’s decision and the widespread misunderstanding of what the secular body pushing the trials, intends to do.

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There's been a lot of heat but not too much light in the recent debate within the media about the proposal by the St James Ethics Centre to conduct a pilot project to test the concept of offering an ethics-based complement to SRE. Not surprisingly, those who think children in primary schools should not be taught anything at all about religion have taken the opportunity to voice their opinion.

Some clergy and voluntary SRE teachers have rushed to the defence of the current legislative arrangements which are proving to be a stumbling block for the St James Ethics Centre. These arrangements prevent schools from conducting mainstream educational programs at the same time as SRE.

In reality, ethics is taught and modelled every day in every primary school classroom in Government, Catholic and independent schools. It is not labelled as ethics. But through what they say, how they live and what they do, teachers play a critical role, at least equal to and sometimes more significant than parents, in shaping the ethical behaviour of their students. Schools have rules and codes of behaviour. They reward good behaviour and they punish bad behaviour.

It could be argued that primary schools and individual teachers could do more in the area of moral education and some of us might also add to that they could be teaching general religious education (ie, learning about religions). But to do this well would require a lot of retraining and massive resourcing.

The willingness of the St James Ethics Centre to contribute to the discourse on ethics in public education is commendable but their entry point is misguided. If what they have is of a calibre and kind that all students in Government, Catholic and independent schools would benefit from, why not approach the NSW Board of Studies? The centre could offer to assist the professional curriculum designers to incorporate their ideas into all syllabuses for all students and offer to assist the employing authorities in equipping all teachers to teach the revised syllabuses more effectively.

There seems to be an assumption that primary students are not learning ethics adequately from their regular teachers. Such an approach to the Board of Studies would enable this assumption to be tested by an independent body and, if necessary, for teaching programs and approaches to be changed.

The big problem with the proposed project of the St James Ethics Centre is its limited scope: it is being offered as an alternative to SRE for 30 minutes (not an hour) per week for only up to 10 weeks and only to Year 5 or 6 students whose parents have withdrawn them (for various reasons) from Scripture. On educational grounds alone, this is inefficient and ineffective; it is an add-on program for 10 out of 280 weeks of a child's primary schooling. It is discriminatory and it conveys two flawed messages: the first, that regular teachers are failing in their core business (an allegation that has not been tested) and that there is an apparent dichotomy between ethics learning and religious education.

If the real intention of the St James Ethics Centre is to have their program recognised as an alternative to the religious education delivered by authorised (and appropriately trained and screened) voluntary teachers on behalf of approved religious bodies (whose bona fides are scrutinised carefully by the Department of Education and Training) then they should seek approval to do so.

At least in this way parents would have the opportunity to opt in as well as opt out of their program. Of course this would require the teachers of this program to meet the same requirements as SRE teachers.

This would also be a more ethical way to proceed.

Dr Bryan Cowling is Executive Director of the Anglican Education Commission.

(Thumbnail Photo Credit: Jiggs Images Flickr Creative Commons)