Sara’s Story

Hello, I’ve just read David Hill’s excellent article in the SMH and wanted to share our experiences at a state primary just north of Coffs Harbour. When we moved here from the UK we asked real estate agents where the best primary schools were for our daughter who was turning 5 in January 2007 and were told to look for a house in Korora, near Korora state primary school – so we did. We registered our daughter and ticked ‘no religion’ and ‘no scripture classes’ on the enrolment form, and waited with excitement for the start of term. Then we got the phone call: would we reconsider our daughter’s exclusion from scripture classes? She would be the only child in the school with nowhere to go, and this would make her ‘different’ from her peers and mark her out from Day One. Did we really want that for her? Wouldn’t it be better to include her in the scripture classes? After all – it was only generalised stuff about learning the difference between good and bad behaviour, and a few Bible stories such as Noah and the Flood…

We caved in straight away and our daughter started scripture with the rest of her class. Over a period of 3 months, though, various things became evident: firstly, her scripture teacher was a mother from her class. Blonde, cuddly and bringing sweets and DVDs into class she had 28 5-year olds eating out of her hand. Our daughter started coming home talking earnestly about God and Jesus Christ. We raised our eyebrows slightly, discussed things, and let it go… for now.

Then our daughter started coming home with photocopied sheets of ‘colouring-in’ from her scripture class, including drawings of sinners being beaten out of the House of the Lord (complete with wounds and bruises), and sinners burning in hell (flames, screaming agony, the works). We requested that our daughter be excluded from scripture classes. Some weeks later we realised that she wasn’t being taken out of class: we were told that in a school of 600+ students no teacher was available to supervise her, that she wasn’t allowed to ‘do’ anything that constituted ‘learning activities’ in place of scripture, that she couldn’t go to the library because that would be ‘learning’ and that there was no-where within the campus where she could go unsupervised. Instead she was being moved to the back of the class and ‘excluded’ although apparently she could still benefit from the sweets, the singing and the DVDs.

We had written one letter to the Principal when we withdrew our daughter from scripture class. We wrote another one, setting out our concern about Ella being ‘in’ scripture class when she was supposed to be excluded from scripture. Nothing happened. We asked for a meeting with the Principal. Nothing happened. We asked in writing for a meeting and finally got one. The Principal, who had clearly attended ‘active listening’ training, earnestly held our hands, looked us in the eye, agreed that the whole topic was a sensitive one in schools and that he whole-heartedly understood our concerns… and did nothing. Worryingly he also confided to us that history, biology and evolution were nowhere mentioned in the school curriculum because they were “too controversial”. We discovered our daughter was sent to sit on the bench outside the Principal’s window, that being the only place in the school where she wouldn’t be in any danger of learning anything and could be approximately supervised by the admin staff without troubling a teacher.

By this time we were feeling more than a little disenchanted. When I went in to help with reading programmes and craft teaching I started looking at the signing-in book for the lay teachers that were coming in to teach scripture. The most mainstream were the Salvation Army, and the rest were decidedly evangelical. In fact the scripture teacher in my daughter’s class came from a church that is an off-shoot of an American church that teaches Creationism, is anti-gay, chauvinistic and believes in the literal truth of the Bible.

Feeling that I wasn’t going to get anywhere with the Principal I investigated the scripture curriculum at State level, speaking to the woman with responsibility. We had a friendly, understanding conversation that ended with the hope that we wouldn’t end up putting our daughter in the independent schools sector… Our patience finally snapped when I went on a school excursion with my daughter’s class. Coming back into the school about half an hour before the end of the school day I discovered that the whole of the undercover play area had been commandeered for an Easter service by an evangelical church group that was a ‘whole school’ activity. Every pupil was there, whether or not they were excluded from scripture classes. There had been no announcement, no permission note for participating in the service or anything else, and the Principal made it quite clear that he didn’t give a stuff about my objections.

We have moved our daughter to a local Steiner school – which is a pioneering, modern Steiner school with fabulous teachers and facilities and none of the old-style Steiner oddities – where she is being taught science and biology and history and comparative religion in a caring environment in which ethics and ethical behaviour are not only important but are talked about, taught and actively encouraged. We are very happy with our choice but I’m sad that the same opportunities are not available in other schools, and I’m very disappointed that we have to pay for it. I was educated in England in Anglican schools and I have to say that I experienced less ‘scripture’ in those schools than I found in Korora.

There you go, for what it’s worth. I’ve been reading about the Ethics course alternative to scripture lessons with enthusiasm and only wish that the Ethics course was available in all schools as a valid alternative to scripture lessons.

Sara

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