School choice to religiously discriminate: religiopolitical activism and secularism in public schooling

ABSTRACT

This paper traces the influence of failed Christian organisation Logos Foundation on Australian secular schooling debates across the 1970s and 1980s. Concerned with the changing nature of secular schooling in the 1970s and 1980s, religiopolitical organisations lobbied for increased parental choice in the ethos of education for their children. Logos, a Christian Right group connected to US think tank of the religious right, The Chalcedon Foundation, concentrated their activism on the right to religiously discriminate in schools. Through developing political arguments to justify the formation of Christian schools, pedagogy, teachers, and support for home schooling, Logos developed argumentation for religious discrimination that can still be seen in contemporary legislative debate and Christian schooling policy. This paper argues that far more attention must be paid to the failed political manoeuvrings of the religious right to better understand the secular education policy concessions being made in the second and third decades of the twenty-first century.

KEYWORDS:

• Christian Right
• secularism
• school choice
• religiopolitical activism
• Christian schools

Notes

1 Capital C for Church indicates the global Christian Church project.

2 There is some question as to whether the early Logos schools were indeed schools as after reading the paraphernalia as adults it appears that the flagship school was a homeschooling academy due to Logos’ arguments against using college-trained teachers to educate their children. For the sake of clarity, we will still use the term ‘school’ when describing their educational organisation.

3 Shelton’s father, Ian, was a senior pastor and leader within the Toowoomba, Queensland, chapter of Logos Foundation.

4 Barnes is deploying memories of Reverend Fred Nile visiting her home, her father’s distribution of Call to Australia paraphernalia, and attending panels at which Nile and her father spoke. She remembers her father being named Nile’s executive assistant on his campaign, but this cannot be verified in any written record.

5 Both Barnes and Myers remember the satisfaction of achieving 100% accuracy and the feeling of success associated with having the most gold stars, the reward for such an achievement. This system did not suit all pupils, with associates of both authors being routinely ranked in ability based on their test scores, with 80% being deemed a failure and necessary for repeating the PACE.

6 The blatant right-wing rhetoric could have conceivably been softened in contemporary resources but analysis to determine this was outside of the scope of this article.

7 The Bill is currently shelved due to amendments the then Prime Minister Scott Morrison believed compromised the spirit of the legislation (Grattan 2022).

8 This was the final pamphlet in a series of four ‘Nation in Action’ booklets written by Howard Carter. The other three were Aids: the plague to end all plagues (1987), The wolf in sheep’s clothing (1987), and 1988: Bi-centenary celebration or constitutional crisis (1988).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Naomi Barnes

Dr Naomi Barnes is a Senior Lecturer and network analyst interested in how ideas influence education policy. Spanning across disciplines, her research contributes to scholarship concerned with evidence-informed policy in education. The growth of communication via social media has kept her motivated to develop models which show the impact of the platforms on the politics and policy of education.

Melanie Myers

Dr Melanie Myers is a writer, multi-discipline researcher and sessional academic at the University of Queensland. Her doctoral novel Meet Me at Lennon’s (UQP) was published in 2019 and her articles and nonfiction have been published in various literary journals. Her academic articles have been published in Hecate and TEXT Journal of Writing and Writing Courses.

Elizabeth Knight

Dr Elizabeth (Lizzie) Knight’s key area of interest is equity of access to and in tertiary education, the provision of institutional information and support for transition into post-school education. In 2017, Lizzie completed a PhD at Monash University, investigating change in marketing messages over the period of higher education massification. Lizzie is also a professional careers counsellor.