Serpents in the classrooms

An innocent enough story in The Courier-Mail on August 23, 2006 marks the beginning of a very low point in Education Queensland’s less-than-good performance, one which Ed Qld has yet to overcome.

Peter Beattie, the out-going and self-proclaimed “media tart” Premier, had chosen to announce his $10 million plan to pay Queensland tax dollars to employ “chaplains” in schools. The site of his announcement, for obvious political advantage, was Highfields State School, just a hymn book throw from Toowoomba, the buckle of the Bible belt.

Kerry Shine was running as the ALP candidate in Toowoomba North again, but this time against Toowoomba’s self-declared Moral Crusader, Lyle Shelton. Lyle had resigned from his post as Toowoomba City Councillor to take the challenge up to Kerry Shine. How better to buy off Highfields and Toowoomba North’s evangelical, Pentecostal, Baptist, AOG, Church of Christ, and Toowoomba City Church electors, than a few dollars in the ever present Queensland Pork Barrel?

According to The Age, June 11, 2006, John Howard and his education minister, Julie Bishop, had approved a plan to install school chaplains some months before it was finally launched, on October 29, 2006. Their plan started at a mere $90 million, but was later to balloon to $165 million.

Whether Beattie stole the plan from Howard, or Howard was emboldened by Beattie, is a moot point. Two years later, the bare facts are these: $175 million of unaccountable tax dollars are being fed by two ALP governments straight into the hands of Australia’s “Religious Right”. And in Queensland, particularly, these tax dollars are enriching Hillsong Church as their many “programs” are bought and run in state schools, with the full approval and endorsement of Premier Anna Bligh and Education Minister Rod Welford, not to mention Rudd’s deputy, Julia Gillard, the pay-mistress of the Commonwealth scheme, the National Schools Chaplaincy Programme (NSCP).

Gillard’s NSCP Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) staff possess a very slim grasp of what goes on in state schools, and lack both the ability and desire to police the scheme. They are very quick to cast blame to the states when things look “dodgy”. Examination of Senate transcripts by The Fourth R*, Queensland’s only “evangelists” for secular state schooling, during questioning by Senator Lyn Allison of DEEWR staff, clearly show the Senator being mislead on one of her questions. Such is the integrity of DEEWR in this matter.

In Toowoomba, the employer of state school chaplains, Scripture Union (SU), has benefitted enormously from the one third allocation of possible NSCP monies to the state. Nearly $60 million of chaplaincy funding has swamped SU in Queensland, who have responded by employing more staff and getting bigger offices. From a mere 200 chaplains prior to the NSCP there are now 500. SU calls this largesse, a “Downpour”. Indeed, a downpour of tax- free, tax dollars.

In a blindingly obvious conflict of both DEEWR policy and Ed Qld policy, the stated aims of SU are to evangelise to school students and bring them closer to Jesus; to convert to them to Christianity, in lay terms. It is unlikely that anyone in Ed Qld or DEEWR has dared to ask to see the job description of the SU chaplains, and these are very hard to find since SU withdrew them from their web site. We, at The Fourth R, have read it and assure readers that we have pointed out the conflict to Welford, with no response to our correspondence.

A recent enquiry to DEEWR from The Fourth R, requesting a breakdown of the denominations of the 500 or so chaplains in Queensland, showed just how slack DEEWR are. Although their own policy, at 4.4.1, requires school principals to state the denomination of the chaplain on the application form, or risk not receiving the $20,000 funding per chaplain, a full 407 chaplains were listed as “other”, and DEEWR stated that this was the best they could do. DEEWR do not police the NSCP applications; they only “process” them.

An examination of school web pages, at random, across Queensland, reveals that neither the Ed Qld’s own requirements for both Religious Instruction (RI) and chaplaincy policies, nor DEEWR’s requirements for their own “chaplaincy” policies, are met in full, or even in part by many school principals. Although this has been pointed out to Minister Gillard, Premier Bligh, Education Minister Rod Welford and his Director General, Rachel Hunter, nothing is done to ensure a state wide crackdown on policy avoidance is undertaken and school principals are disciplined; just as recalcitrant students would be.

Just recently, The Fourth R had to resort to exposing the Commonwealth Minister for the Status of Women, Tanya Plibersek, on ABC TVs Q&A program, hosted by Tony Jones. Our question concerned the gendered and very sexist set of “values” being taught during RI at Toowoomba State High School. This RI programme had been written by, or with, the school chaplain, funded by Gillard, and delivered a different set of sixteen values to girls to the nine values boys were taught. Following Q&A, late on the Friday afternoon, Ed Qld changed at least the outward appearance of the values, from “boys” and “girls” to “A” and “B”, with some of the more pernicious “values” seemingly dropped (go here and navigate to the A-Z index via the directory, then to go to R and hence to RI and Chaplaincy. This takes you to the “post Q&A exposure” doco they now use).

The “values” on offer were straight out of the AOG-Hillsong “aspirational” set of life-values that, at least in the Toowoomba Ed Qld region, can be found echoed on the Toowoomba City Church web page at the “Healing Room”. This particular web page has been taken down, for some unknown reason, and is no longer on open display but with the miracle of Google, a cached page is still there to be read and wondered about.

Here one could read all sorts of totally unbelievable stories, that, unbelievably, Queensland’s many SU chaplains and the “Christian mentors” Ed Qld school principals are filling state schools with, clearly take as gospel. Scrolling down to the story dealing with the “very tired pastor”, one read just how these people, charged originally by Prime Minister John Howard with the task of being simply “a friend in the playground” to the state school children his Education Minister Julie Bishop said lived in “a moral vacuum”, and so needed religion in their state schools, really view Australia’s Indigenous population.

The same people who would be giving Indigenous students “spiritual and ethical guidance” in their largely totally unqualified roles of “chaplains”, and whose friends are allowed into Queensland State Schools to work as “Christian mentors”, delivering the message of love and inclusiveness that we hear Christianity is all about, also believe that Indigenous people are “of the occult” and practice mysterious acts against white pastors, for daring to enter tribal lands. The punishment meted out to these Christian pastors? Why, nothing less than placing a serpent, complete with eggs, deep into the pastors chest.

And the story about the “women with the very sore left foot” is an evangelical’s parable of how women need to “reverance” their husbands, even when they refuse to work or take any responsibility in life. Such are the attitudes that Queensland’s Premier and Education Minister feel are worth promoting, via their “Christian mentor” militia, in our once secular state schools.

There are serious issues involved here that need to be addressed by Rudd, by Gillard, by Bligh and by Welford, and not just in Toowoomba.

As a result of the 1910 Queensland referendum, in order to allow our once secular state schools to deliver RI and Bible reading, the word “secular” was expunged from the 1875 Education Act.

As a result, Queensland state schools have not been secular since 1910.

So, there is absolutely no end to the mumbo-jumbo that can be delivered in state schools by groups like SU, by unqualified school “chaplains”, by “Christian mentors” and by Ed Qld’s own, ever-expanding, group of evangelical school teachers, school principals and deputies and senior managers at the regional executive director level both up, and down, the Ed Qld hierarchy.

Queensland needs to get the word “secular” back in the Act, for the sake of both Indigenous children and non-Indigenous children. Those sexist values of Hillsong, are the same style of values that allowed Toowoomba to deny for years, and even still today, that the E.S. “Nigger” Brown sign was racist.

Even with that revolting sign down, Queensland has a long way to go before it can even pretend to be “the smart state”, and where better a place to start than within the education system, by rooting out not the serpents in the chests of so-called Christian pastors, but the serpents in the classrooms, those who believe in and promote hate, fear, and stupidity.

*About The Fourth R:
The group, The Fourth R, is the only group in Queensland currently calling for the return of secular schooling in Queensland. The group was formed in Toowoomba in 2006, following its efforts to expose EQ staff who were ignoring the RI policies in Toowoomba primary schools. An internal EQ enquiry showed The Fourth R concerns to be “spot on”. Education Minister Welford has demanded to know why The Fourth R is running “a crusade” against Ed Qld. Since the NSCP funding The Fourth R has extended its reach to include calling DEEWR to account for their lack of policing of the $165 million of taxpayers funds. Our supporters, from across the state and nation, support secular public schooling, and honesty within government.