The Latest Instalment in the Whig Interpretation of Australian Education History: Catherine Byrne's JORH Article Free, Compulsory and (not) Secular
The original meaning of the term secular in the free compulsory and secular nineteenth-century Australian public education acts is often contested, and has recently become part of a contemporary debate about the presence of confessional religion in state schools. I outline four different interpr...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Wiley-Blackwell
[2017]
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| In: |
Journal of religious history
Year: 2017, Volume: 41, Issue: 3, Pages: 386-403 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Australia
/ Compulsory education
/ Public school
/ Secularism
/ Educational system
/ History
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| IxTheo Classification: | AH Religious education KBS Australia; Oceania RF Christian education; catechetics |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | The original meaning of the term secular in the free compulsory and secular nineteenth-century Australian public education acts is often contested, and has recently become part of a contemporary debate about the presence of confessional religion in state schools. I outline four different interpretations expressed in Australian education history writing, then review the recent Journal of Religious History article Free, Compulsory and (not) Secular by Catherine Byrne, arguing that it belongs to the secular liberal or Whig interpretation of the meaning of secular in the acts. The article is critiqued for forcing sources to conform to an overly rhetorical narrative device: a polarised structure valorising Victorian legislator George Higinbotham, and demonising New South Wales legislator Sir Henry Parkes. The article is also criticised for sub-optimal source-work, lack of awareness of the corpus of Australian education history, and overt contemporary policy agendas. I also suggest that the larger Whig interpretation of secular as part of a liberal progress narrative, underemphasises a religious hermeneutic and a critical theory hermeneutic: that a Protestant consensus about state schooling and secular in the Public Education Acts was also a deeply sectarian device for excluding Catholics from a dominant social settlement, just one part of a systemically divided and prejudicial culture. |
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| ISSN: | 1467-9809 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of religious history
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1111/1467-9809.12386 |