Let's get God out of the Classroom

There are many pros and cons about private and public schools. One is bloody expensive, another will cost you peanuts. One has nicer buildings, another generally has nicer people. But one of the most important factors is religion.

Here, private and independent schools are mostly religious. Catholic, most of them, and quite a few are sex-segregated, at least for secondary school. And I wouldn't go to one, personally, nor would I send any children of mine to one. But I'm not totally opposed to it. Most of them offer what schools should offer - sound, wholesome education, all in the name of God and stuffy uniforms.

Public schools here are, in theory, secular. And I'm a profound believer in secularism. I think it's unfair that children are born into religious households and are expected to be obedient to whatever religion they happen to be born to. Did anyone ask if they wanted to be a Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Jew? No. I also believe that very young children don't fully believe religion and what it entails, so they either don't take it seriously, which means the virtues of religion are wasted on them, or they take it too seriously and become our next generation of tyrants.

But the problem to my dilemma would be simple - go to a public, secular school.

But, you see, public schools here aren't really that secular at all. It varies from state to state and area to area, but all public schools lean slightly to the right and, I think, slightly into the bosom of God. I know of public schools who have compulsory religious education, and by religious education we mean bible and scripture lessons. When I was in primary school we had a School Prayer. I remember it, vividly:

O God we pray that you will help us
To be thoughtful and kind to each other,
Friendly and honest in all we do,
Grant our live shall be such that
No word, thought, or deed shall ever disgrace the name of our school,
Or shame those we love best,
Amen.

Now, it's not exactly a jihad or a Hail Mary, but as I got older I found this prayer more and more offensive. Prayer is for religious people, and I have deeply private and personal reasons why I am not religious. Why should I pray to a God I do not believe in, do not believe exists?

Now, an idyllic school wouldn't have a school prayer. Prayer is for churches, for societies where participants are there on a volunteer basis. A reasonable would have the prayer, but not have teachers watching us like a hawk to make sure we say the blessed words.

Whenever I tried to complain about saying the prayer, they said the same thing, all the time. 'Just say it to your own God'.

This, my dear friend, is why I disliked Christianity and Christians as a whole for a long time. It is an easy thing, as a child, to balk at something and dislike the whole lot. For me Christians were a rather unreasonable lot. Who are they to tell me what to say? What do they know about being, feeling, utterly Godforsaken? Nothing, I tell you, nothing.

I have friends who had it a lot worse. Why should children of all beliefs be forced to attend classes about a single religion? Since when has Christianity been the be all and end all of everything? We are a free country of free men, and yes, free children. Treat us that way.

They tell us we live in a free country, and perhaps that is true. There are no laws against freedom of speech and religion. On the surface all are equal and at liberty.

But freedom has its ways of ensnaring people. The paper may say one thing but the people...the people say another. In a society of few rules people make up their own. It is insecurity. We need rules to know that some stranger isn't going to go 'boo' in the night. Social persuation, Australians are particularly susceptible to that. If they're doing it, I'm doing it. If they're not doing it, I'm not gonna be the first.

So in anything - religion, politics, whether one wears strips or spots - it is not what, but who, and how many, that matters. The lack of rules is very clever. We're trapped in our own social invulnerabilities. There may be no rules that says that I must participate in Christian beliefs, but Judeo-Christian values have infilterated the core of society, every single element, for better or for worse. But societal betters and peers force you into things. If I hadn't said the prayer it wouldn't have rubbed up the teachers very well, but lets face it, I was never known for buttering up primary school teachers, but if I had openly voiced out against it I would have been a freak. And over what? They're just words. But they mean something to them, and it's a great offense to them, that I not participate what sometimes seems more of a cult than a religion sometimes, to certain people. And those words, and the absence of them in my life, mean something to me.

People can't take individuality, uniqueness. It absolutely terrifies them. If I give you salt, you're okay with it, because you know all its going to do is make your food salty. If I give you some unlabled foreign spice, you'd freak out. And I was the spice, dear friend, amongst all the salt. Social ostracization is the worst punishment of all, and I think Australians use and fear it quite nicely.

I said the damned prayer, and I lost all my respect for religion and religious people. Religion is about peace and tolerance, not about dictators frightening the gullible into things. It's explotation, especially to primary school students. It's a vulnerable target for people who corrupt the religion of Christianity into a business.

Religion is a private thing. Perhaps if I had given adequate time to meditate upon it, perhaps if I don't spend my life with people hounding me with the endless question of heaven and hell, I would have chosen one and settled nicely into it. But I've given up on the whole notion. If religion is pure truth, innocence, then people have blackened it with our own sin, our own greed for power, and to be part of the masses. I see nothing in it now for me.

If you want your child to have religious education, go to church. Or a private school. Or both. People with strong religious beliefs really have no place in secular education, just like people who are as profoundly atheist as I am have no place in religious education.

Get God out of the classroom. Stop doing all this crap in the name of God. If God exists, I doubt he'd be happy with these so-called evangelicals who have corrupted religion and diseased our society with false pretences and empty promises. They give everyone a bad name. We have a right to a secular society.