by Melissa Brennan

Created on: January 13, 2007   Last Updated: June 21, 2007

Howard Government Blunder

Do you think that John Howard and his team of cronies actually think about something before they introduce it to the Australian community? Take for instance their latest blunder with education. What do they think they are going to achieve by putting chaplains in every school? Yes, a lot of the Australian community will be of the same religion as the chaplain that's at their school, but what about the rest of the community at large? What are Muslim, Jewish, Hindu and the other religions around going to do with a Christian chaplain? A little Hindu girl is not going to feel comfortable going to a Christian chaplain to talk about her problems, when she knows that he/she is from a different religion to her family. The wrong religion as her family might tell her.

If families want their children to have some form of religion in their life, then why cant they just take them to church occasionally or send them to church with a family friend that goes, if they themselves are not comfortable going? How can the John Howard government justify spending all that money putting a chaplain in every school, when he has to know that not every child will benefit from it. That maybe half the school that a chaplain gets sent to, is a different religion to the chaplain?

How can they justify that and then close down half the schools in the ACT? By spending that money on chaplains and then shutting down those schools, they are forcing children to be up-rooted from their school and forced to go to another one. That is also causing the amount of children in each of the classrooms of the schools that remain open, to be added to and then the children are getting even less personal attention and not being given the opportunity to learn as best they can, to the best of their ability.

Teachers have enough trouble giving each child the attention they deserve when learning in a classroom of say 15-20 children. These schools are now being asked to fit more children in. How can that be for the benefit of the child? How is that going to make things easier on families in those communities? They may now have to travel further to take their children to school.

The most important aspect for children at school is that they learn. That is the whole reason there is such a things as schools. Putting a chaplain in the schools will only benefit some of the children. Shutting down schools and forcing children to change schools, affects every child at the school that gets shut and every child that the school that got to stay open, now has to teach.

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