Taking God to School The End of Australia's Egalitarian Education?

Fewer Australians now practice a religion or believe in God than ever. Yet the Australian government increasingly pushes conservative Christianity on children. Nearly 40 per cent of secondary students attend a private school, which are overwhelmingly Christian. Canberra funds them heavily, and sends evangelical Christian chaplains into both public and private schools. Some states subsidize Christian volunteers to deliver religious instruction, and some make Christian ministry a matriculation subject. Some Christian schools promote Creationism, and some advertise that their first priority is training "soldiers" to "do battle for the Lord in a world which rejects His laws and dominion," rather than good citizens of Australia. Marion Maddox demonstrates that Australian governments are systematically demolishing the once-proud free, compulsory, and secular education system, in favor of taxpayer-funded dogma and division. The implications are unsettling for society and for democracy.

Marion Maddox is a professor of politics at Macquarie University. She is the author of God Under Howard.