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Social & Moral Issues |
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Social & Moral Issues |
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SAME PROBLEMS IN RELIGION IN EDUCATION POLICY ANNOUNCED TODAY 9 September 2003 Kader Asmal announced his Religion in Education policy at a media briefing in parliament today together with a document and calendar promoting religious holidays of multiple religions. Unfortunately, the same 9 problems objected to in 20 June 03 policy in the article "Why surrender our freedoms?" are still in the document. Essentially, multi-faith religious observances and education are encouraged, but single faith observances and education, such as Christians prefer are made very awkward and difficult. Kader Asmal in answer to my question, confirmed that single-faith observances are not allowed in assembly and if they take place at other times, then the school is obliged to actively organise parallel observances for other faiths represented at the school. Headmasters say it is impractical to organise regular observances for every minority. Thus Kaders other options of rotation of religions, multi-faith readings, 'neutral prayer' or moments of silence are all that is left as a practical option for many schools. What this means is that Christians will have to prepare to take the issue to the Constitutional Court. Some good legal research has already been done confirming our strong position, but we need school governing bodies and parents to take a courageous and sacrificial stand against it. Amongst other things, this will mean encouraging headmasters to ignore the policy and continue with single faith observances and education and also donating money towards the upcoming court case. Certain Christian organisations declared premature victory after Asmal pretended to give in to their demands. They must be woken up again to mobilise their people to pray and speak up. Others have accepted the policy, after Kader Asmal told them that they had to in terms of the constitution. Our legal advice says otherwise. Rather Kader Asmal's policy is unconstitutional. We are will study the policy in more careful detail to see what exactly has changed, but from a brief study today - the main 9 problems are still there: 1. Single-faith religious instruction is forbidden during the formal school programme (-14,22,23,29,55,56). 2. Religious observances at school must accommodate multiple religions (-60). At assemblies, for example through: 'neutral' prayers or rotation of readings and observances (-61). Outside assembly, voluntary attendance, single-faith observances are theoretically allowed (-62). In practice, however, this will be very difficult to implement because of the requirements for alternatives for minorities, supervising unbelievers and as the school day would have to be longer. 3. Invited outside religious workers are not allowed to regularly present religious instruction, unless they are also qualified teachers. Others may come as occasional guests (-8,34,41,66). 4. Public schools, except those on private land, are not allowed to have a religious ethos (-16,70). 5. Education on sexual morality is restricted to avoid offending homosexuals (-30). 6. Independent and public schools on private land, are still expected to achieve outcomes for Religion Education (-16). 7. Teachers must be trained in agnostic comparative religion as taught at many universities (-35,41,42). 8. Faith and religion are marginalised to a minor part of the school life (-32,48). 9. Teachers freedom to promote faith is restricted (-35,39).
CHRISTIAN
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