Ethics Classes: Much Heat, Less Light

By Dr Bryan Cowling

Posted on 04 November 2009

There's been a lot of heat but not too much light in the recent debate within the media about the proposal by the St James Ethics Centre to conduct a pilot project to test the concept of offering an Ethics-based Complement to SRE (Scripture) in Government primary schools. Not surprisingly those who don't think children in primary schools should be taught anything at all about religion have taken the opportunity to voice their opinion. Some clergy and voluntary SRE teachers have rushed to the defence of the current legislative arrangements which are proving to be a stumbling block for the St James Ethics Centre. These arrangements prevent schools from conducting mainstream educational programs at the same time as SRE.

In reality, ethics is taught and modeled every day in every primary school classroom in government, Catholic and independent schools. It is not labeled as ethics but through what they say, more importantly how they live and what they do, teachers play a critical role, at least equal to and sometimes more significantly than parents, in shaping the ethical behavior of their students. Schools have rules and codes of behavior. They reward good behavior and they punish bad behavior.

It could be argued that primary schools and individual teachers could do more in the area of moral education and some of us might add to that general religious education (learning about religions).To do this well would require a lot of retraining and massive resourcing.

The willingness of the St James Ethics Centre to contribute to the discourse on ethics in public education is commendable but their entry point is misguided. If what they have is of a calibre and kind that all students in government, Catholic and independent schools would benefit from it, why not approach the NSW Board of Studies with an offer to assist the professional curriculum designers to incorporate their ideas into all syllabuses for all students and offer to assist the employing authorities to equip all teachers to teach the revised syllabuses more effectively?

Such an approach would enable the assumption that primary students are not learning ethics adequately from their regular teachers to be tested by an independent body and if necessary, for teaching programs and approaches to be changed.

The big problem with the proposed project of the St James Ethics Centre is that it is being offered as an alternative to SRE for 30 minutes (not an hour) per week for up to ten weeks only to Year 5 or 6 students whose parents have withdrawn them (for various reasons) from Scripture.  On educational grounds alone, this is inefficient and ineffective; it is an add-on program for ten out of 280 weeks of a child's primary schooling. It is discriminatory and it conveys two flawed messages: the first, that regular teachers are failing in their core business (an allegation that has not been tested) and that there is an apparent dichotomy between ethics learning and religious education.

If the real intention of the St James Ethics Centre is to have their program recognised as an alternative to the religious education delivered by authorised (and appropriately trained and screened) voluntary teachers on behalf of approved religious bodies (whose bonafides are scrutinized carefully by the Department of Education and Training) then they should seek approval to do so. At least in this way parents would have the opportunity to opt in as well as opt out of their program. Of course this would require the teachers of this program to meet the same requirements as SRE teachers. This would also be a more ethical way to proceed.