A Little Misunderstanding

I just spent my evening reading Fred Nile’s publication “Family World News” Volume 18 Number 9 (September 2011), which had been brought to my attention as a collection of objections to ethics classes. I was not surprised to find titles such as “Ethics Classes: The Case Against” and “Roll Back Children’s Philosophy Classes” but I was surprised by the apparent lack of knowledge and understanding of ethics classes. Here are a few examples:

Kel Richards (journalist and broadcaster) states that ethics classes should be offered as “atheist classes (to which atheist parents could send their children)” and that they are part of an attempt to “lure children away from the benefits of SRE”. Ethics classes are not about atheism and are certainly not only for the children of atheist parents. They are available for any child who opts out of the scripture classes at their school. Those children may have parents of a religion not represented by SRE at that school, or may have opted out of SRE for other reasons. Ethics classes were introduced to give children who do not attend SRE something worthwhile to do during the SRE period. It is wrong and inflammatory to suggest that the people behind ethics classes are trying to lure children from SRE.

Wayne Richards (general manager of the NSW Presbyterian church) says he does not believe that ethics classes were needed as a meaningful option for children not attending SRE classes. He says it is not credible that teachers could be so poor that they “lack the skill to guide a child to use their own time educationally and valuably”. This shows ignorance of the fact that NSW government policy has until recently prevented state school teachers from offering lessons to students who opted out of SRE. So, they were not allowed to “guide a child”.

Wayne Richards gets it wrong again when he refers to ethics classes as “anti-God classes”. He offers no justification or explanation of the comment. It is just left floating there for readers to take it or leave it. He must be aware that ethics classes are supported by the Anglican and Catholic churches so it is hard to see how he can think that they are anti-God.

Ross Clifford (principal of the NSW Baptist College) expresses concern about ethics teaching. He asks “Where will the volunteer teachers come from for these classes, will they be trained, and what will be the independent review process?” So it seems he does not know about Primary Ethics’ work in recruitment of ethics coordinators and teachers and training of ethics teachers, curriculum development and review. His questions could be answered by a visit to their web site, and perhaps a chat with them. He does not need to wonder, because the answers are easily available.

The publication is littered with apparent misunderstanding and incorrect assumptions. Do these writers really have such poor understanding of ethics classes? They are not people in the street with a microphone shoved in their face being asked for a comment. As the authors of articles on this topic, they give the impression that they are informed. It seems hard to believe that they could not have checked a few facts and verified a few assumptions before publishing these comments, which seem likely to misguide and inflame readers.

So what, you might ask? Fred Nile and friends are having a rant. Why worry if they make a few mistakes? Well, the problem is that in the same publication, partly on the basis of this unreliable information, readers are urged to take action to have ethics classes removed from the school curriculum. Readers are misguided into thinking that ethics classes are not needed, they are for atheists, they are anti-God and are luring children away from SRE, then they are asked to take action to remove those classes. The writers in Fred Nile’s Family World News have every right to encourage their readers to take action, but they should not use misinformation to help that encouragement along. Perhaps the writers genuinely don’t understand ethics classes, but it is not OK for them to misinform and misguide their readers. To do so is (you guessed it) unethical.