June 8, 2011

To The Person Who Tried The Contact Form Today

Posted by franc under education | Tags: , , , , |
[2] Comments 

Slight, unscheduled break from regular programming…

The webform here is just a bit of a joke I slapped together, it does work, but does not verify your details if you made a typo. My contact details are available via the gravatar top right as well, and my direct email is no secret – franc.hoggle@gmail.com

I penned a fairly lengthy response to you and would be interested to pursue the points you have raised, and I assume you want confidentiality because you didn’t comment here – but your email address bounced. I would appreciate it if you could contact me again. This is the time stamp of your message –

Time: Wednesday June 8, 2011 at 8:29 am

Gratuitous amusing graphic for anyone else that may have clicked in here – (more…)

 

June 7, 2011

Access Ministries: Professor Barry McGaw – Is There Something You’re Not Telling Us?

Posted by franc under education, ethics, Evonne Paddison, politics, religion | Tags: , , , , , , , |
[6] Comments 

”I don’t see anything wrong with a special religious instruction that operates precisely on [the current] grounds. If we deny any place to religion in public education and wish to make it entirely [secular], we are actually basing it on a particular world view.”

Sound familiar? It should. It probably just looks unusual unaccompanied by any extended frothing about fundamentalist atheists, militant secularists, christophobes (or similar epithets) bent on destroying christianity itself. But other than that, it is the same tired, casuist misrepresentation that is framing the debate as one of absolute anti-theism vs. the decent christian world and not one of a protest against SRI and the NSCP being hijacked by incorrigible liars from various non-representative christian cults of the crusading, charismatic, snake-handling variety. This is the only real card the Access apologists have to play because the less that the average, census ticking Australian christian family knows about what folks like Access Ministries get up to in our schools, or what their “education” consists of, the better.

The problem with the above quote though is that it’s not from an actual (known) Access apologist/shill, but from Professor Barry McGaw who heads up the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) – who are ultimately responsible for the curricula in Australian schools from Kindergarten to Year 12. (more…)