Thousands of volunteers teach Ethics every week – they get as much out of it as the children do.
Hear from six of them about why they do it and how you can become an volunteer ethics teacher too.
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It takes a village to raise a child – and many of those who enrich our children’s lives do so as volunteers.
P&C committees, canteen, reading groups, garden club, uniform shop, sport coaches, Scouts, Guides, playgroups – volunteers make a huge contribution to children’s lives and are being celebrated in Volunteer of the Year Award ceremonies held this month around the state.
“Yes we are volunteers, but we take this role very seriously,” said Suzan Fayle, who has facilitated ethics classes for the past six years at Orange Grove Public School.
Ms Fayle is one of 2800 Primary Ethics volunteers who help 45,000 students each week to think for themselves and develop the skills to disagree respectfully with others. Lessons based on philosophical ethics give children skills in critical thinking and ethical reasoning.
The children who complained about the teacher at Dulwich Hill Public School (“Ethics teacher stood down for saying Stolen Generations due to bad parents”, Sydney Morning Herald, September 9) used just those skills and should be commended.
“I’ve taught all levels and cannot recall a time where the script has allowed me to voice my own opinion. Our training is very strong on the point that the lessons are written by highly experienced educators and the lesson works without any extraneous input – or leaving anything out – by teachers,” said Ms Fayle.
Primary Ethics emphasises in all aspects of our training for ethics volunteers that their role is to facilitate discussion using the approved curriculum without omission or addition. Our shorthand for this is ‘follow the script’.
Two weeks ago we immediately stood down the ethics teacher when we were notified he had breached our policy that ethics teachers must not introduce their own opinion into discussions in ethics classes.
The requirement for volunteers to not voice their own opinion is clearly and consistently communicated in:
Many of our volunteers are retired Department of Education teachers or those in part time positions (full time employees are not permitted by the DoE to volunteer) or have experience in early childhood, tertiary or workplace education. But as the role is to facilitate discussion among the students, it differs from that of a traditional teacher who is seen by students as the main source of knowledge in the classroom. Objectivity is a key criteria when determining suitability of candidates for the ethics teacher role and volunteers from a range of backgrounds are a good fit.
This incident is a rare occurrence among the 8300 volunteers who have been trained by Primary Ethics since the program’s inception in 2011, and Primary Ethics has acted quickly and in accordance with our publicly available complaints policy.
The benefit of ethics classes, and the efforts of our many terrific volunteers, should not be reduced to this flawed example by those who see ethics classes as an inconvenience to their efforts to remove Special Religious Education from schools.
The fact that these students were able to identify and challenge the comment of their ethics teacher is a sign that the program is working.
Primary Ethics is the single approved provider of special education in ethics (SEE) to NSW Department of Education public schools. While our primary focus is primary schools, we’ve fielded many requests over the years from high school principals, parents and students themselves, who have sought a secular alternative to Special Religious Education that helps young people make sense of the world. In those early years, it was not possible for us to act on those requests. 2020 will mark the tenth anniversary of Primary Ethics and we’re pleased that next year we will be able to offer high school communities the opportunity to participate in the program, when we pilot ethics classes for year 7 students.
An ethics program for year 7 students will:
By undertaking a pilot program for year 7 students in a small number of willing high schools, we expect to gain important insights into the secondary school learning environment. In particular, the pilot’s purpose is to assess variations in delivery at secondary schools, such as length or frequency of lessons, and also to ensure the additional training ethics teachers will receive is best practice for managing a community of inquiry with students aged 12 and 13. The pilot will focus on Year 7, but once established, the secondary program will be made available for stage 4 (both years 7 and 8) students.
The pilot program, and any subsequent classes that are delivered after its review, would only be run in high schools where there is an existing weekly or fortnightly special religious education (SRE) program.
The pilot will only be run in schools where there is:
Current legislation gives parents of all NSW public school students the right to seek ethics classes for their children, and it would be unjust to deny parents the choice of SEE while SRE is present. In high schools where religious education is woven into the fabric of the school community, we cannot sit on our hands waiting for a change in legislation that may never come. There is an opportunity to provide valuable education for students, and Primary Ethics is dedicated to supporting parent choice wherever possible.
If, during the course of the pilot program or subsequent delivery of ethics classes, there is legislative or policy change around the inclusion of SRE/SEE in the secondary curriculum, we would negotiate with individual schools and the Department of Education on an outcome that best meets the needs of the students and considers the needs of the school community and Primary Ethics volunteers.
We are currently seeking expressions of interest from high school staff, parents/carers of students who will be in year 7 in 2020 and existing or previous volunteer ethics teachers who are interested in participating in the year 7 pilot program.