Religion seen as still having a place

FILE

Rotorua school leaders and parents are divided over whether religion still has a place in schools.

The fresh discussion comes after an Auckland father made headlines for saying he would take his daughter's school to the High Court for continuously putting her in Bible classes without his permission.

Owhata Primary School principal Bob Stiles said the fact no parents had pulled their children out of the "Cool Bananas" faith-based programme taught to juniors seemed to indicate there was still demand for religious education.

"The kids quite enjoy it," he said. "It's not a bother if parents don't want their kids to take part but, generally, they seem to be quite happy with it."

Mr Stiles, Rotorua Principals Association president, said the most important thing was to teach kids to respect different values and the programme was a good starting point for talking about some of them.

Otonga Road School principal Linda Woon likewise believed there was still demand for religious teaching.

"A lot of parents pay extra to go to faith-based schools," she said. "If there wasn't a need for it, there wouldn't be so many parents wanting to send their kids to faith-based schools."

Otonga also included Cool Bananas in its syllabus. Parents had the option of opting their child out of the programme when they enrolled - an option as many as a third of parents took, Mrs Woon said.

"We're a multicultural school with over 26 nationalities so we have to be aware of different values.

"Our alternative values programme looks at some of these. This term's value is respect. As you can imagine, there's a lot to be taught about and discussed around respect."

Some Rotorua parents were more sceptical about religion being taught.

Rotorua mother Layla Robinson said she would consider the religious instruction a school gave when deciding where to send her son.

"I wouldn't send him to a school because it had religious education but if there were two schools that achieved equally well and one school had 5 to 10 per cent religion education, I'd probably send him to the other school," she said.

"If parents want their kids to know about a certain belief system, they can talk to them about it at home or take them to church in their own time."

Meanwhile, Rotorua mother-of-two Fiona Cameron believed kids should be taught about all religions.

"A public education paid for by the government shouldn't just teach about one religion," she said. "Religion is a part of life so it should be something that's studied but there's a lot more religions than just Christianity."

Several Rotorua Daily Post Facebook followers sided with the Auckland father, saying "good on him" and left comments such as "religion is for home not school". Others thought it was over the top to take the school to court.