A Newcastle primary school has made national headlines for removing hymns and prayers from its Remembrance Day service.
The Department of Education says Carrington Public School made the changes because “the overwhelming majority of the school’s families wish the service to be secular” and that the RSL supported the decision.
Carrington Public has also received criticism for moving its service from the Cenotaph to the school hall.
A local RSL organiser claims it was moved because he wanted a hymn and prayer included in the service – as is done in many services across the country.
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Completely agree with the school. Public schools should be secular. This makes them inclusive to all.
i absolutely agree with the school. This is a non religious occasion. No prayers and hymns required. A huge media beat up. Real journalists would be ashamed.
No i dont agree with it. Next they will take prayers and hymns out of the ANZAC services, another non religious occasion, so as not to offend anyone
It’s not about offence. Not all service people were or are religious. Why do prayers need to be said to honour our servicemen and women?
First of all, hymns often lead the men into battle in the first world ware. Second of you make the schools completely secular, then they become exclusive of the Christian point of view. If you want them to be inclusive you would need to have a mix of the lot
Religion is for church, religious schools and home, nowhere else. People can pray or read their bibles if they wish at school but schools don’t need to teach it. Dale do you believe that most service people are religious now? If so that would be against the trend for the rest of the population.
I totally agree with the school’s decision.This is a total media beat up.I’m happy that the school actually is acknowledging Remembrance Day.I like to know how many school’s and workplace’s actually stopped and took time out to acknowledge Remembrance Day today.
There had never been hymns and prayers in the Remembrance day services in the years gone past at Carrington. So it’s not a case of removing them, just not adding them in.
Good to see a school take a stance like this. Australia is quite secular, if people put real thought into the census before filling it out it it would show just how overwhelmingly secular we are.
I knew a non religious man who on his death bed requested to have a priest come and read the Bible and pray. Secular people many Australian may be as they lead their ordinary lives but we are not Remembering ordinary lives. We are talking about men and women risking lives. Religion has a big place on such occasions as Remembrance Day for it is non uncommon for a restless soul to call on Almighty God when death is near, and death comes to us all.
Religious people can be secular. Secular does not mean atheist it just means that you believe that religion is a personal thing and should be kept out of public occasions. Nothing to stop people praying peacefully at these events if they wish to do so. Many Christians send there children to public schools because they believe that the teaching of religion is their personal responsibility not the schools.
I fail to see how this is newsworthy, since when has rememberence day been a religious observation? This public school hasn’t had hymns and prayers as a part of its rememberence day in many years, and why should it? The real question should be why some public schools choose to assign religion and prayers to rememberence day and more specifically Christian dogma in the first place. The fallen soldiers deserve respect not for their deaths to be used to inflame arguments and promote Christian ideology.
Utterly brain less