The Public Purposes of Education and the Teaching of Creationism-as-Science
By Ann MorrowIn contrast to North America, in Australia there are no constitutional barriers that prevent governments from funding religious schools. As a result, it has been customary to characterise Australian schooling as comprising three sectors: the government systems and the two non-government sectors containing the Catholic and (also mostly Church-based) Independent schools.
In recent years, changes to Commonwealth funding policies have stimulated a growth in new types of schools receiving support from the public purse. Some of these – like The Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment in Victoria, and the Rudolph Steiner schools - are based on specific, non-religious philosophies. Others are based on religions, for example Islam and conservative forms of Christianity.
According to Workplace Relations Minister, Kevin Andrews, ‘… the (recent) growth in non-government schools has been largely the smaller, Christian schools in outer-suburban areas of capital cities’. The Australian Association of Christian Schools claims that in 1991, 30,477 students were attending 151 Christian schools. By 2003, 75,108 students were attending 253 such schools.
This article focuses briefly on two aspects of this growth. The first relates to the private purpose of schooling – its impact on the future of individual students. The second goes to the public purposes of schooling and the ‘public values’ which should underpin publicly-funded schools.
What are the private benefits of Christian schools?
It is not easy for an outsider to gain detailed knowledge of the curriculum taught in the Christian schools. In interviews conducted as part of the author’s doctoral research, Christian School principals explained that creationist accounts of the origins of life on the planet are taught as alternatives to, or are given equal status with, evolutionist accounts. Peter Symon, commenting in The Guardian on April 6, 2005 on the ‘mushrooming’ of ‘Christian fundamentalist schools’ provides more details than did my interviewees: ‘The curriculum at these schools promotes creationist theories and rejects scientific method as a means of knowing the world. The Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) schools, for example, have their own text books propagating a belief in the literal truth of every word of the Bible’. A search of the web-sites of organisations such as Answers in Genesis yields the information that Creationism commonly includes the beliefs that the world was created in six calendar days and that the basis for the measurement of geological time should be Noah’s Ark and the Flood.
One can only speculate on the likely prospects of the graduates of creationism-as-science when they seek to enter certain fields of employment. We do know, however, that such students will not be denied access to tertiary education. In November last year, Professor Glyn Davis, the incoming Vice-Chancellor of Melbourne University, alerted us to the growth of new tertiary institutions that, while they do not meet Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) protocols for accreditation as universities, nevertheless are able to offer ‘public university places’. One such is Tabor College (headquartered in South Australia, but with branches in other States). Tabor describes itself as ‘a multi-denominational charismatic Christian Education Centre offering government-accredited courses at tertiary level’. Examination of its web-site reveals that ‘The College seeks to ensure that all its programs are (among other things) ‘scripture-based’, which means, the site explains, that ‘everything must be tested against God’s Word’. The motivations for the choice of such institutions by undergraduate students as well as their post-graduate outcomes would be worthy subjects for research.
Creationism-as-science and the public purposes of education.
What public benefits do education policy-makers believe accrue from publicly funding the teaching of creationism-as-science? Will the graduates of institutions that teach anti-evolutionary theories be capable of making contributions to ‘the knowledge society’? Or will they be disadvantaged in comparison to their peers from more orthodox courses?
If, indeed, some disadvantage attaches to the learning of creationism-as-science, then it is important to realise that it is not evenly distributed throughout the population of students. Creationist constructions of science are not going to be allowed to hamper the students of the elite independent religious schools of Australian capital cities. Their science teachers will not be allowed to ‘perpetrate falsehoods … to debauch language and betray truth’ (to paraphrase Richard Dawkins). The cultural capital of their families and schools communities will protect them from such risky curricula.
Nor do the students of government schools – even those located in socially disadvantaged areas – have anything to fear: the regulatory role of the State clearly extends to them. Evidence of teaching outside commonly accepted scientific paradigms would sooner or later be detected and acted upon. Perhaps sometimes erring on the side of excessive secularism, Australia’s government schools have become fairly practised in distinguishing between religious instruction and religious observance.
It is the students of the new, low-fee Christian schools – those that Kevin Andrews has identified as ‘the smaller Christian schools in outer-suburban areas of the capital cities’ - that will be subject to the teaching of creationism-as-science. Once again, existing social and locational disadvantage is compounded (this time by questionable curriculum) and in this way, the public funding of such curriculum becomes an equity issue, and raises the question: ‘What, if anything, is the role of the State in preventing curriculum from compounding social disadvantage?’
It is difficult to come to grips with this question without having a prior view of how ‘the public system’ is to be defined in today’s turbulent, ‘paradigm-shifting’ educational environment. Some of us are old enough to have known an era in which the teacher’s role in curriculum development was trusted rather more than it is today. Increasing demands for accountability from the public system have limited the professional autonomy of the individual teacher. Notwithstanding, there are distinct limits to the State’s capacity to monitor the content of schools’ curriculum offerings. Some people would say that is as it should be. Many of today’s teachers - by no means all, it has to be said – would like to see less, rather than more, prescription on the matter of what should be included in their schools’ curriculum. And yet, in comparison to many other OECD countries, Australian governments are less attentive to whether or not the school curriculum meets the public purposes of education.
For anyone who has a view about what should specifically be excluded from the school curriculum, this inattentiveness presents a dilemma. On the one hand, we resist the notion of the State as central ‘curriculum policeman’ – and rightly so: the history of totalitarian countries has shown that this approach clearly has its disastrous downside. In part, that is why state legislation specifies that children must be educated according to the wishes of their parents. But what are the policy remedies for those who believe that – both on public interest grounds and on grounds relating to the rights of individual students – it does matter that there are schools in our system that teach creationism-as-science?
Perhaps the solution lies in a re-definition of the public system, and a re-formulation of funding policies to reflect that new definition. Perhaps it is time for us to define the public schools system not as ‘the collection of schools that are owned by the state’ but as ‘the collection of schools that practise the public values of social inclusiveness, fairness to all students, and adherence to the public curriculum.
The public value of social inclusiveness demands that no children be excluded from a school on the grounds that their social circumstances or apparent learning capacities prevent their being accommodated within the school’s curriculum.
The public value of fairness to all students requires that schools commit to meeting the needs and protecting the rights of each individual student.
The public value of adherence to the public curriculum (defined from time to time in nationally- and in accordance with state-agreed curriculum guidelines) helps a nation’s governments to maintain the collectively valued knowledge and ethos. Most other countries like ours tie public funding regimes to curriculum requirements. There are two grounds for this arrangement: the civic or public purposes of education, and the private purpose of protecting the rights and needs of the individual student.
Jack Keating and Stephen Lamb have argued for a new settlement between government and non-government schools in which the fully-funded public system would include those ‘elements of the non-government sector (that) share a commitment to the ideals of public education.’ The corollary of this proposal may very well be that schools that are not prepared to practise these public values should be left outside the public funding regime – whether or not the school in question is ‘owned by the state’.
There may be other values that should be included in a new list of criteria for the receipt of public funding – and for inclusion in ‘the public system’: ‘academic excellence’, for example. And why not? As long as they support school organization and teaching practice that strengthen the primary public values of social inclusiveness, fairness and public curriculum.
Endnotes
1 Samantha Maiden, The Australian, 10/9/04, cited at http://www.catchthefire.com.au/senate2.html A directory of Christian schools can be found at http://www.christianschools.edu.au/directory/location.asp
2 Since 2004, the AACS no longer includes in its membership schools covered by Christian Schools Australia.
3 http://www.aacs.nep.au/public/breaking_news_details.asp.id=194
4 Peter Symon, ‘The contest between evolution and creationism’, The Guardian, 6 April, 2005, http://www.cpa.org.au/garchve05/1222science.html
5/6 Professor Glyn Davis ‘Tiers or Tears? The Regulation of Australian Higher Education’. Inaugural Melbourne Politics Lecture 2004, Department of Political Science, University of Melbourne, 22/11/04
7 Tabor College, 2004 ‘Welcome to Tabor College, Australia’ http://www.tabor.edu.au
8 Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, Penguin,London, 1986, p.284
9 Jack Keating and Stephen Lamb, ‘Public Education and Public Purposes: School Quality, Sectors and Space’ IARTV Seminar Series 138, Jolimont, 2004.
* Ann Morrow is a former chief executive of the Victorian Ministry of Education and chair of the Schools Council of the National Board of Employment, Education and Training. She chairs the External Advisory Committee of the University of South Australia’s School of Education.
