Gordon Stenning recently sent us a copy of a very interesting old letter from 1965. The letter was sent to Gordon’s father and concerns his wish for his children not to receive ‘religious instruction’ at school. It was another 45 years until Primary Ethics came into being to provide an alternative to religious instruction in NSW public schools. Prior to that, some schools made Religion mandatory for all children or the children whose families did not opt for Religion were placed in ‘non-religion’, which could consist of doing nothing or colouring in, etc.
Gordon writes: I received your annual report recently and was pleased to see that Vaucluse Public School [in Sydney’s east] has a Primary Ethics program. I have attached a letter written to my father, who was interested in alternatives to religious indoctrination when I was at primary school. He would be delighted to have been aware of your success. Please feel free to pass this on to your volunteers to emphasise the timeless relevance of their invaluable volunteer work. My thanks and congratulations to you and your colleagues for the advancement of public education in Australia.
Gordon continues: By way of background, my father had a lifelong interest in secular education and ethics and was a member of a group I recall to be the Secular Educational Society, as well as the Australian Council for the Defence of Government Schools. He was a lifelong member of the NSW Humanist Society and at one time President of the Australian Humanist Society.
He was opposed to the idea of publicly supported religious indoctrination of primary school children and wanted my brother and I to be excused from scripture classes on that basis. I recall that he was successful in that endeavour and we were allowed to sit in a classroom with other children for the duration of the religious classes.
I have attached a photo of our year 1 class provided by one of my school friends, Stephen Gonski, who went on to become a primary school teacher.
