Facts and information can be neutral, but teaching is never neutral. All schools are faith-based schools. Some are more intentional about their faith-teaching than others, but the faith of those who teach is passed on to students. This occurs because every person carries basic assumptions. These personal beliefs seep into how we live and, in this case, teach.

Today I was talking with the café owner near where my wife and I go after church. He is from Lebanon, and I will call him Olay (to protect his identity). He was saying that one of the large store owners commented his business has brought a better feel to the shopping centre because he is so friendly and welcoming. I asked him if that was because he is committed to a sense of community, like back ‘in the old country’. He laughed as if he had been caught out with a naughty secret, and then agreed. Olay’s approach to life had rubbed off on others.

The ‘Olay’ effect is why Artificial Intelligence can never be neutral. Its programmers are human and as such they impart their faith on technology. Why are we taken aback when an AI platform generates an African American President Lincoln? AI is reflecting the choices of the programmers in accordance with their activist ‘faith’.

What has surprised me is Australia’s recent discussion about religious discrimination where those who call themselves conservative mutter statements like, ‘Well, if you want to take government money, you have to play by their rules…’

That is ignorant in at least two ways.

Firstly, all registered and accredited schools already play by the government rules. To be registered, the not-for-profit proprietors have to meet the usual corporate governance and business regulatory requirements. To be accredited as a school, independent schools have to demonstrate in great detail how they are complying with the respective state version of the National Curriculum. For those who do not understand this, ask to see it in practise at your local independent school.

Note that the National Curriculum only demands compliance with students meeting knowledge and skill competencies. It does not ask for compliance with beliefs. This is because we live in a multicultural society, which means we also live in a multi-faith society. Faith (which these days can also be called ‘ideology’) is the source of beliefs, not facts and science per se. That is, our schools instruct for information and skill competency. That is what we test.

Now we come to the second point of ignorance. When we teach, we are encouraging our students to do something further with the information they have acquired. That requires consideration of student faith. A student’s belief systems should not be assessed – it is competencies we assess. However, spiritual commitments are expressed through what is sometimes thought of as the most powerful part of teaching – the ‘hidden curriculum’.

The hidden curriculum can be understood as the overall impact a teacher has on the classroom. For example, if the teacher is a climate alarmist whose dominant belief system involves eco panic, this will be expressed in the students and their work. The same holds true for feminists, Critical Race Theory, antisemitism, and any other strong set of values.

What I find astounding are those who decry the loss of Judaeo-Christian heritage in our schools, lament the rise of climate alarmism, and disagree with the creeping green pantheism identified in the National Curriculum by the IPA last year, and yet still agree that so-called faith-based school should not have their religious freedoms protected if they are receiving government funding. You cannot be a conservative if you are not a conservator.

Allow me to return to the claim that all schools are faith-based.

In state-run schools, you never know who might be teaching your child in terms of their beliefs – but they still have them. In contrast, a school labelled as ‘faith-based’ is being honest about the faith of their teachers. Faith schools are saying to parents, ‘Here is what we believe, and why. If you want your child to test their thinking against this line of thinking, you are invited here.’ Indeed, I have suggested for decades that all teachers (and counsellors) should declare their belief system upfront. That would be refreshingly open and transparent. It would not be an excuse for deaf indoctrination and it would create greater respect and a safer place for students to test out their ideas.

That is one aspect of teaching in a faith-based school that surprised me when I moved there after being in public health. I would routinely let my students know my beliefs, and invite them to test out theirs, with them knowing that universal respect for people was a foundation for how we lived together in our classrooms. As I learned to do this routinely, my classes became transparent in their discussions. Students opened up to each other. I remember being so taken by this dynamic that I commented to my wife one evening, ‘If parents knew what their kids are willing to talk about in front of the whole class…’

Respect, listening, and certainty breeds trust, sharing, and a search for truth. The disrespect represented by pseudo-objectivity, indoctrinating interactions, and pigeon-holing people because of their ideas, breeds either a feeling of loss or an action of thoughtless compliance. Perhaps both. The dominant ‘faith’ becomes controlling, and interestingly, they often label themselves the oppressed of society.

So enough of this nonsense that some schools are faith-driven and others are not. All schools in all systems have teachers who care. But with reference to the critical cultural issues of our times, state-run schools are increasingly inviting students to a camouflaged belief system that many of us believe is dangerous to the welfare of our cities and nation. Independently governed schools that work to have a transparent, consistent, and invitational belief system provide what so many parents desire – a place where ‘good values’ are taught.

History has shown that these values come from the Judaeo-Christian way of belief. Yet there is sustained pretence that when parents want their child taught in places that not only teach about those histories, but also want to live that way as a whole community, that the opportunity for that choice is somehow wrong.

When living transparently together in a learning community, we can choose to explore together the impact of our beliefs in every aspect of life. That is called holism. The debate about ‘only religious teachers’ being able to be chosen under new legislation is tedious ad infinitum. It betrays a reductionism that invites, or probably demands, a hard-hearted, utilitarian, and means-focused instructional climate where immaturity is writ large because the nature of humanity is denied. We are more than clever animals or well-programmed instruments.

Legislators – please respect our students and parents enough to continue giving them real choices, and not ones that pretend that schools can be something that they cannot be – places of neutral and amoral teaching and learning.