Rubenerd

Victorian state opposition leader Matthew Guy had this suppository of wisdom to share, as reported by Henrietta Cook in The Age:

Religious instruction classes will be reintroduced into the Victorian state school curriculum if the Coalition wins next month’s election.

“A government I lead will always believe that you determine the values by which you raise your children, not the education department,” he said.

So why does he want the education department teaching religion again then?

In 2015, the Andrews government scrapped special religious instruction from class time, following a vocal campaign from parents who said religious instruction has no place in secular state schools.

The classes were replaced with lessons on respectful relationships, global cultures, ethics and faith education.

Heaven forbid! Australia has among the lowest religious adherents in the world, so it makes sense.

My dad was a business traveller, it’s how we ended up living in Singapore. But for a few years before then we lived in Brisbane and Melbourne, and I had religious classes. Though they should have called them Christian classes.

They were great, because us heathens could play on the Apple IIs and Commodores in the labs next door at the opt-out discretion of our parents. My first brush with agnosticism was attempting to explain deities in BASIC, but the booleans didn’t compute.

(Also fsck them, a religious teacher was the only teacher with whom I had a very specific issue; a sentence I’ve wanted to write for two decades but only worked up guts to today, in the context of a random blog post).

For those who didn’t get the reference, Guy’s federal colleague Tony Abbott was responsible for that suppository of wisdom gaffe. I think it perfectly encapsulates issues like this.