Re Arry's comment: "For instance the St. Jame's ethics centre is Christian based so if they were developing the courses there would no doubt be a christian influence."

The ethics-based complement to scripture pilot, approved this week by Minister Firth and Premier Rees, will be developed by UNSW Professor Philip Cam under the auspices of the St James Ethics Centre. Professor Cam, an international expert in philosophical and ethical inquiry for children, will be designing a secular, ethics-based course.

Saint James Ethics Centre is not a religious organisation and does not seek to promote any religion.The Centre does not receive any funding from religious organisations.

The Centre’s name is derived from the fact that it was originally established by the parish of St James’ Anglican Church, King Street, Sydney. The Centre’s founders were concerned, from the outset, to ensure that the Centre was genuinely independent and it has always been open to people of good will of all faiths and of no faith at all.

Coleen could you post a link to the ethics based component planned?

Hi Coleen,

this is being discussed all around the web. No one seems to know the answers to questions of the course content.

For example is it process or content based? i.e. Teaching how to think about ethics vs teaching what ethics to think.

A disclosure of the program would really help allay fears that we are getting just another content based system, which is just as bad as the scriptural ones.

Coleen, why is this proposal just about ethics? Surely religions are also concerned with metaphysics, ontology, epistemology? I suggest, with all due respect, that the St James Ethics Centre proposal to offer a strictly ethics-based complement to Scripture which prima facie sidelines these other aspects of philosophy and religion may be motivated by self-interest.

The other premise of this proposal seems to be that it will strictly be a "complement" and thus not an "alternative" to Scripture. Philip Cam once wrote in an exercise: "One thing is said to be a complement to another if it helps to make that thing complete, or if the things go naturally together to make a whole of some kind." I feel uneasy with the notion that ethics and religion, or even philosophy and religion, somehow go together to complete a whole, and would not like my kids to entertain such an idea or be involved in a enterprise with that as an underlying assumption.

Of course, these things may reflect political necessities in order just to get something up for the kids who sit idle during the scripture classes. But is it ethical to introduce some poor-man's P4C through the back door? Why not just leave the kids alone?

"Why not just leave the kids alone?"

Why not indeed? As I've said before why be spoil-sports and muck up an hour that a lot of children probably look forward to enjoying.

Gus, the “secular ethics” course is a complement to the scripture course not in the sense that it’s an add-on, but in the sense that it completes (or at least extends) the range of options. It is something for students to do instead of scripture, not as well as scripture. Currently students who choose (or whose parents choose for them) not to do scripture, do nothing. It seems to me that to allow this state of affairs to continue would reinforce exactly the impression that you want to dispel; that ethics/values can only be reflected upon in a religious context.

Could SJEC be seen as self-interested in advocating a course which addresses only ethics, and not the other philosophical topics which religion addresses? Well, arguably, I suppose. On the other hand, the particular mission of the SJEC is to promote study of and reflection on ethics and ethical questions; what else <i>would</i> they propose? There’s no reason why other agencies or organisations shouldn’t offer programmes addressing a wider range of philosophical questions, and schools could chose whichever ones they wanted, or whichever ones they felt parents wanted.

Yeah your right thanks for your suggestion

thanks for that

Thanks for that

Thanks for that