The controversial – and often misunderstood – extracurricular groups tend to raise controversy. But under equal access laws, schools can’t discriminate against a club based on its point of view.
It’s not the first time Australian schools have been given a choice of a religious school chaplain or a secular welfare officer, and for some schools the decision can be divisive.
Kennedy v. Bremerton, a case about a public school teacher’s prayer, helps close out a Supreme Court term in which religion was often in the spotlight.
Schools currently rely on third-party providers that require all those who apply to do student counselling and community work as school chaplains to have a committed Christian faith.
The history of education in the West is closely associated with Christian religious spaces – from the first cathedral schools to the use of churches to teach children in WWII.
A groundbreaking High Court ruling outlawing the spanking of children in South Africa has outraged some Christian bodies that claim parents are entitled to hit their children in a “godly way”.
The judgment recognises that religion plays a large role in South African society. The right to follow a religion is embedded in the constitution. This means that South Africa isn’t a secular state.
50 years after Time magazine’s famous ‘Is God Dead?’ cover, Church attendance numbers are tumbling. But that doesn’t mean Christianity is on the way out.
Many South African teachers don’t accept the theory of evolution. They feel deeply conflicted when they have to teach it to their pupils as part of the life sciences curriculum.
Sarah Croché, Université de Picardie Jules Verne (UPJV)
In Senegal, schoolteachers who are personally religious must work in a secular space that marginalises religious discourse and knowledge. They have several ways of subverting the system.
The Trojan Horse extremism affair that hit a group of Birmingham schools this summer and the ongoing inquiries into it, have raised suspicions among Muslim parents, teachers, and pupils in the UK. News…
Despite recent calls for its elimination and the High Court (again) finding that it was funded unconstitutionally, the Abbott government announced this week that it would continue its school chaplaincy…
Religion in schools is being debated once more in anticipation of findings from the controversial Review of the National Curriculum. This is a challenging topic locally and internationally. Can, and should…