The National Curriculum - Rainbow Serpents and other things.

Caesar

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#26
Re: Religious lessons in State Schools. I don't get it.

WTF? Last time I visited this thread it was an interesting ongoing chronicle regarding someone's practical experience with the nominally-secular public schooling system.

Now it's just a monument to one idiot's racist ignorance. Surely we've got enough threads like that on BF.
 

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Thread starter #27
Re: Religious lessons in State Schools. I don't get it.

I agree completely - I'm just saying even in some Catholic schools the focus of the RE lesson is quite often nothing to do with presenting Christianity as fact, rather more focused on social issues and concerns students have.

It doesn't really have a place, but then, neither does respect for other cultures or embracing multiculturalism.

Schools should teach not preach.
Respect for other cultures absolutely has to be a part of school learning. Other cultures are within the school, within the same classroom. How else do you get a tolerant classroom without teaching each other to recognise, understand and respect each others' differences?
 

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#28
Re: Religious lessons in State Schools. I don't get it.

Its still relevant to Western science, though, just as Voodoo might be.

Western science, with its more finely-tuned methods can come in and expand greatly on indigenous knowledge. But indigenous knowledge still contributes (in varying degrees of importance), hence why its included in a curriculum studying the history of science.

In all seriousness, from a teaching perspective that whole subject probably gets taught in a single-week project somewhere around year 8. Kids will go out, research some medical product that was developed based on indigenous usage, hand it in and never think about it again.
When you talk about 'Western science' the implication is that indigenous knowledge of herbal medicine (and the seasons) is also science. It's not science when you attribute the cause of illnesses, cures and the climate to primitive gods. It doesn't belong in a science curriculum, neither does voodoo and neither does creationism.

Depending on the teacher and school, kids might spend two or three weeks on this stuff. Time better spent on real science.
 

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#29
Re: Religious lessons in State Schools. I don't get it.

Respect for other cultures absolutely has to be a part of school learning. Other cultures are within the school, within the same classroom. How else do you get a tolerant classroom without teaching each other to recognise, understand and respect each others' differences?
Getting a bit off topic but the evidence suggests you can't achieve tolerance amongst kids of different cultures by trying to teach it. Muzafer Sherif and his Superordinate goals seems to be the way to go.
 

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Thread starter #30
Re: Religious lessons in State Schools. I don't get it.

When you talk about 'Western science' the implication is that indigenous knowledge of herbal medicine (and the seasons) is also science. It's not science when you attribute the cause of illnesses, cures and the climate to primitive gods. It doesn't belong in a science curriculum, neither does voodoo and neither does creationism.

Depending on the teacher and school, kids might spend two or three weeks on this stuff. Time better spent on real science.
I'm fairly sure that 'primitive' gods (whatever that means - aren't all gods primitive?) is not the component that would be studied, though. To my understanding, there seem to be two elements that are applicable:

- Indigenous knowledge of local plants and animals useful in medicine, and how western science has been able to use this knowledge as a starting point for more advanced science
- Indigenous knowledge of seasons, weather conditions, and particularly history, and the way that western researchers can use these to inform their own research.

If its a short program focused on different ways of 'knowing' about the world, I don't have a problem with it. What I will concede is that the science curriculum appears to be packed (as are all the other areas of the national curriculum). I suspect that the whole strand this belongs to will be relegated to a crappy 3-week unit in term 4 when the kids are half-asleep anyway, with the scientific knowledge and method stuff making up the bulk of the real teaching time. That's probably about right, too
 

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Thread starter #31
Re: Religious lessons in State Schools. I don't get it.

Getting a bit off topic but the evidence suggests you can't achieve tolerance amongst kids of different cultures by trying to teach it. Muzafer Sherif and his Superordinate goals seems to be the way to go.
Superordiante goals seems a pretty interesting way of teaching it to me.

There's ways of teaching that don't involve lecturing at students, and they're mostly a lot more effective.

That said, just learning about different cultures can go a long way towards developing tolerance, as it helps dispel some of the myths of the schoolyard.
 
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#33
Re: Religious lessons in State Schools. I don't get it.

It's either all in or all out.

You can't teach the bible and then not teach dreamtime stories. As far as I am concerned call it all religious and cultural stories and teach all of them.

But don't teach them as 'science'.

Both the bible and dreamtime stories have hiostorical observations of what the world was like at the time the events happened.
 

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#34
Re: Religious lessons in State Schools. I don't get it.

That said, just learning about different cultures can go a long way towards developing tolerance, as it helps dispel some of the myths of the schoolyard.
Problems are bound to arise when it becomes clear that some cultures are completely and utterly worse than others.

Nobody could tell me that any aspect of Hutu or Tutsi culture is better than white European culture. Its just factually incorrect and you end up demonising the kids from those cultures. Same with Somali or Sudanese culture.

Yeah cool, your people spend a month every year drinking milk to get fat and then mix it in with your own blood - yeah, totally dispels the myth about you people being savages... what a ****ing joke.
 

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#35
Hi guys a few updates on what is an isn't taught in schools (some of you may have outdated views)

In my 13 years of schooling, barely 4 weeks was spent teaching indigenous culture, I know more about Egyptian society than I know about indigenous culture. This was spent all in independent Catholic schooling. So I don't know where this indigenous paranoia is coming from, in reality, the average person doesn't know much about indigenous history and little is spent on indigenous history in school. I know more about the subject from the media than I do from my education.

There seems to be this argument that by recognizing the indigenous culture and relationship to nature somehow we're justifying their culture. I think it's just pointing out facts. I mean I agree that I think we should go easy on indigenous history just like we should go easy on Australian history in general. But there seems to be this fear campaign that we're starting up the black armband view of history, I wonder how teaching kids about how indigenous people used flora to cure diseases is doing that (it might bore the heck out of them though).
 

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Thread starter #36
Re: Religious lessons in State Schools. I don't get it.

Problems are bound to arise when it becomes clear that some cultures are completely and utterly worse than others.

Nobody could tell me that any aspect of Hutu or Tutsi culture is better than white European culture. Its just factually incorrect and you end up demonising the kids from those cultures. Same with Somali or Sudanese culture.

Yeah cool, your people spend a month every year drinking milk to get fat and then mix it in with your own blood - yeah, totally dispels the myth about you people being savages... what a ****ing joke.
You seem to have a bizarre understanding of what tolerance is.

The point of multiculturalism is not that any culture is 'better' than another. Its recognising that people are different and being tolerant - not of everything, but tolerant of difference.

I know very little about Hutu, Tutsi, Somali or Sudanese culture, so I'm not going to comment, except to say that reducing a complex culture to a single practice and emphasizing difference in a perjorative manner isn't helpful to anyone or anything.
 

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acker

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#37
National Curriculum

*Entry of Indigenous Culture in History Curriculum :thumbsu:
*Entry of Indigenous Culture in Science Curriculum :thumbsdown:

Because it went too far, some things such as indigenous burning off and environmental management was a positive thing. But putting the dreamtime into the science curriculum was probably not such a smart thing.

I am a decendant of Irish immigrants from the Potato famine around 1850, my 4x Great Granny took her 7 kids including my 3x Great Gramps to Australia then after her husband presumably starved to death.

I think a lot of Anglo Saxon/Celtic Australians with Irish heritage probably arrived here in a similar way.

Indigenous leaders Pat and Mick Dodson share this mid 19th century Irish heritage. As does Barack Obama.
 
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#38
Re: Religious lessons in State Schools. I don't get it.

It's either all in or all out.

You can't teach the bible and then not teach dreamtime stories. As far as I am concerned call it all religious and cultural stories and teach all of them.
The Bible is followed by about a third of the worlds population, the "rainbow dreamy snake" is a relic of a primitive and completely irrelevant culture in today's world.

I would be happy for my children to be taught verses and stories from the bible, they have practical uses in modern day lives (Eg. arguing with Jehovah's Witnesses). I would of course have full faith in my children's ability to identify the stories as bullshit, (every single animal on a boat? no kid would believe that), but at least given the massive cultural influence of these teachings they would know what is being spoken of when the Bible is referenced.

The Rainbow Dream Snake is utterly irrelevant and can teach my (hypothetical) children nothing.

That's just how I see it.

I would however insist that even the most gruesome stories of the old testament are included, I don't want the religion airbrushed with all the nasty bits taken out. Some excerpts from the Koran may be handy as well, but the Rainbow Serpent crap is laughable.

I'm not saying the Dreamtime Religion (whatever its called) is any less valid or likely than the three great monotheisms, but it is completely useless and irrelevant information that is a waste of tax payer money.
 

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#41
Re: Religious lessons in State Schools. I don't get it.

You seem to have a bizarre understanding of what tolerance is.

The point of multiculturalism is not that any culture is 'better' than another. Its recognising that people are different and being tolerant - not of everything, but tolerant of difference.

I know very little about Hutu, Tutsi, Somali or Sudanese culture, so I'm not going to comment, except to say that reducing a complex culture to a single practice and emphasizing difference in a perjorative manner isn't helpful to anyone or anything.
But some cultures are better than others. Its confusing when you learn scientific methods of evaluation and analysis, and then get told that in this one aspect of life you're meant to treat subpar outcomes as equal to superior ones.
 

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Thread starter #42
Re: Religious lessons in State Schools. I don't get it.

But some cultures are better than others. Its confusing when you learn scientific methods of evaluation and analysis, and then get told that in this one aspect of life you're meant to treat subpar outcomes as equal to superior ones.
'Better' for you perhaps. Depends on how you measure it. But if you believe in freedom of thought and action, then you have to at least tolerate difference and allow others to accept 'subpar outcomes' for themselves. And also accept that while you might be right, and your own culture might be 'superior' in terms of some outcomes, you might also be wrong.

I believe it is better to support Carlton than any other team. I could apply scientific methods of evalutation and analysis (they have won the most grand finals, etc) to support it. But others may still choose to follow teams with clearly 'subpar outcomes' like Melbourne or the Bulldogs. I'll disagree with them, but tolerate them nonetheless. And the last thing I'd do with, say, Melbourne, is point out that they haven't won a premiership since 1964 and define their supporters as inferior on that basis. Clearly its an inferior outcome, but its also possible that Melbourne supporters rank other outcomes as preferable (home games at the MCG to use MCC membership with? Nothing on the schedule in September to interfere with snow season?). Reducing a group of people to a single characteristic or based on a single inferior aspect is to unfairly denigrate those people.
 

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#43
Re: Religious lessons in State Schools. I don't get it.

'Better' for you perhaps. Depends on how you measure it. But if you believe in freedom of thought and action, then you have to at least tolerate difference and allow others to accept 'subpar outcomes' for themselves. And also accept that while you might be right, and your own culture might be 'superior' in terms of some outcomes, you might also be wrong.
Then don't those cultures have to tolerate my opinion that they're shit?

Or does it only go one way?

And that's assuming you can teach tolerance in the first place. I went through Australia's best state school - I enjoy some other cultures, tolerate some and downright loathe others. Did our school brainwashing tolerance system fail?

I believe it is better to support Carlton than any other team. I could apply scientific methods of evalutation and analysis (they have won the most grand finals, etc) to support it. But others may still choose to follow teams with clearly 'subpar outcomes' like Melbourne or the Bulldogs. I'll disagree with them, but tolerate them nonetheless. And the last thing I'd do with, say, Melbourne, is point out that they haven't won a premiership since 1964 and define their supporters as inferior on that basis. Clearly its an inferior outcome, but its also possible that Melbourne supporters rank other outcomes as preferable (home games at the MCG to use MCC membership with? Nothing on the schedule in September to interfere with snow season?). Reducing a group of people to a single characteristic or based on a single inferior aspect is to unfairly denigrate those people.
Scientifically speaking, supporting Carlton IS worse than supporting any other AFL side. If you go through the history of the AFL, they're the worst behaved club and cause more animosity than any other.

Melbourne have won more legitimate flags than Carlton anyway. But thanks for bringing this off topic a bit, I really can't be arsed with the Rainbow Serpent anymore, it was boring as a kid, boring as a teen and its even more boring now. I just hope future generations don't have to waste their time learning about it.
 

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#44
Re: Religious lessons in State Schools. I don't get it.

If white children are taught aboriginal history in Australia.

Are aboriginal children taught about the brilliant job done by the first europea settlers in colonising the nation, building up Australia into what it is today?

That would seem only fair.
 

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#45
Re: Religious lessons in State Schools. I don't get it.

If white children are taught aboriginal history in Australia.

Are aboriginal children taught about the brilliant job done by the first europea settlers in colonising the nation, building up Australia into what it is today?

That would seem only fair.
Most aboriginal kids don't go to school mate.
 

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#47

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#48
Re: Religious lessons in State Schools. I don't get it.

Most aboriginal kids don't go to school mate.
Sure they do, thousands of em go every day.


They look just like alot of aboriginal activists/leaders, blue/green eyes and pale skin.

How can you msis so many of them when they are right in front of your eyes?
 

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#49
Re: Religious lessons in State Schools. I don't get it.

Sure they do, thousands of em go every day.


They look just like alot of aboriginal activists/leaders, blue/green eyes and pale skin.

How can you msis so many of them when they are right in front of your eyes?
Figured they were white.
 
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#50
Re: Religious lessons in State Schools. I don't get it.

Only 15% of them are literate - so if they are going to school they aren't learning much. Probably spending too much time learning about fruity snakes instead of learning their ABC's. Better to be PC than be able to read though, I imagine.

http://www.abc.net.au/nt/news/200411/s1232213.htm
A six year old study that focuses on remote communities.

Well done:thumbsu:
 
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