My daughter goes to a Baptist youth group* on a Friday night because it’s a chance to spend time with her good friend from primary school who goes to a different high school. Each week when I pick her up … Continue reading An imperfect rose
Because I don’t like reinventing the wheel, here’s the email I just received from Primary Ethics: Dear Supporters, As reported on ABC News at 7pm on Monday, July 18, Rev Fred Nile has told the O’Farrell government that he won’t vote for their new IR legislation unless they agree to cancel Ethics Classes in NSW public schools. At last count, Primary Ethics had started 180 Ethics classes in 128 schools across the state, teaching about 2700 students in Years 5 and 6 each week. You may recall that there are about 100,000 children whose parents opt their kids out of … Continue reading Please help defend Ethics classes from attack by Fred Nile
Hosted by Mrs4444. Time for the end of week mental declutter that is Friday Fragments. Let’s see what’s floating about in here shall we? **** I did my 6th Kiva loan this week, which apparently makes me an average Kiva lender. Must do better. I’m going to stop buying Macca’s coffee on work mornings and instead do a Kiva loan each month. There’s a perfectly good coffee machine at work anyway. **** The church notice board that I was venting about on Thursday last week has gone from offensive to merely bemusing. It now reads “Without God the world is … Continue reading Friday Fragments
I drove Caitlin to her ballet class this afternoon, on the way we pass one of the local churches and, as I find myself involuntarily doing every time, I read its notice board. Now, the things written on this notice board are often inane and sometimes illogical* but this one strikes me as being actually offensive. “God allows what he hates to achieve what he loves.” I beg your pardon? The end justifies the means? All the suffering and hatred and evil and misery in our world is justified by the supposed fact that some people will believe in and … Continue reading Quick hit: Church billboards make me sad.
Stuff I thought was worth sharing… Karen Healey, at Attention Rebellious Jezebels, reviews books “in dialogue style in a spoilerific manner that often renders in-depth, wonderful works nonsensical” and is also highly amusing. Charlotte of Charlotte’s Library asks Where are the Good Mothers in Middle Grade Science Fiction and Fantasy? Ladysquires at Shitty First Drafts explains Why I’m Not Proud of You for Correcting Other People’s Grammar. On the subject of the Ethics Classes trial: Teaching Ethics as an option to non-scripture at Motherhugger. Practical things you can do to help – a post in the discussions section of the … Continue reading Linkfest No. 17
My niece attends one of the schools involved in the Ethics classes trial. Yesterday her mum posted a photo on Facebook of an article appearing in their local Village Voice newspaper in which Annika is quoted on the subject of the ethics classes. Click to embiggen “I think the ethics classes are really fun,” Leichhardt Year 5 student Annika Rees said. “The teacher gives us situations like whether we think something is fair or not, and then we discuss the topic and give our own opinions. It’s important because it gives us an opportunity to see other people’s point of … Continue reading A few words from an Ethics trial class student
This afternoon Tom came home with a 1964 pre-metric Australian penny that he’d been given by his Scripture teacher for remembering the weekly Bible verse. I asked what the verse was and he quoted – Peter said “You are the messiah, son of the living God.” I asked if he thought that what the Bible claimed Peter had said was true and he looked at me like I was silly and said “No” with an undercurrent of “Duh!” So then I asked if he’d told his Scripture teacher that he didn’t believe it, and he answered “HELL NO!” Which struck … Continue reading Thursday is Scripture day at school
Here we are at the beginning of December, my house is strewn with Christmas decorations, the kids have decorated the tree, we have strings of lights ready to festoon the garden, I have all my special Christmas candles out, the Advent calendar is hanging by the dining table, there’s Christmas music loaded up on the iPod and I’ve started my annual re-read of Connie Willis’ Miracle and Other Christmas Stories. Yes, I’m an atheist celebrating a pagan mid-winter festival co-opted by the Christian church to commemorate the birth of a man who was was almost certainly not born on the … Continue reading I’m really rather fond of this time of year
It’s been fun, I’ve written 12 times as many posts as I did last month making it through my third NaBloPoMo with relative ease and, I think, only minor irritation to my family. We have 2 and a half weeks of school left for the kids, that’s only 12 days of primary school to go for David. I got his high school orientation info pack today, so many pieces of paper, so many forms to fill in, fees to pay (I’m interested to see that these include a voluntary $100 per student donation to the P&C – wonder how many … Continue reading Bye, bye November
I started to respond to comments on my previous post on the subject but it was getting kind of epic, so I thought I’d better chuck it all in a post of its own. This may be a little disjointed! (BTW, Scripture = Special Religious Education, or SRE, but no-one calls it that.) A couple of people made reference to the thumb-twiddling in the library being not such a bad thing, I must admit I very nearly included a disclaimer in the original post to the effect that I was quite sure the kids were perfectly happy with the thumb-twiddling … Continue reading More thoughts on Scripture in schools
Mim's Muddle 