The Chaplain

Sunday 10 December 2006 7:10AM

The Howard government is making federal funds available for schools to employ chaplains. The aim is to provide pastoral care for students, and to enhance the teaching of "values" in education. But what kind of values does a chaplain represent? And why are some schools set against the idea?



Reporter: The Prime Minister's decision to provide $90-million to put chaplains into the nation's schools has drawn criticism from some teachers and parts of the Labor Party...

Julie Bishop: Chaplains are already making a valuable contribution to the wellbeing of school communities across Australia - but not all schools, and certainly not in all states are these services available. So the Australian government's responding to the call...

George Pell: The pressures on young people today are very, very considerable. For chaplains, people who have a gift for working with young people, they really are able to help them when they're confused, or under pressure, or depressed...

Announcer: Critics have described it as a divisive and stupid political stunt. The Prime Minister revealed the plan yesterday, announcing that $90-million would be made available for schools to appoint religious counsellors. Today John Howard defended the move...

Reporter: This school chaplaincy program will cost $90-million over three years. Do you see this as a key priority over other facets within the education system that could be funded?

Gabrielle McIntosh: If someone wanted to come and volunteer their time to do that, we probably would look at it with an open mind. But the idea that we would pay someone good money to come and do it, grates on my nerves, when I know my own kids won't be able to go out and get jobs and get the same good money. And yet they're going to be lectured to, on full wage. by a middle-class person who has no clue where they're coming from? It grates with me.


David Rutledge: You won't find many schools in Australia - particularly public schools - who'll say that they don't need more in the way of resources. But how many schools are desperately crying out for the services of a chaplain?

Hello, and welcome to Encounter. I'm David Rutledge, and this week we're looking at the ins and outs of a controversial new proposal being put forward by the Federal government.

Late in October, the Prime Minister, John Howard, announced that the government will allocate $90-million over the next three years for a National School Chaplaincy Program. From January 2007, public and private schools throughout Australia will be able to apply for grants of up to $20,000 a year, to employ the services of a chaplain, on a full-time or a part-time basis.

The Prime Minister believes that schools are looking for more in the way of spiritual and pastoral support for their students, and he thinks that a chaplain - whether Christian, Muslim, Jewish or Buddhist - can help to provide services that go beyond the brief of psychological counsellors and youth workers.

But not everybody is thrilled with Mr Howard's proposal. Some say that in the case of state schools, the proposal represents an incursion of government-funded religion into public education, which is supposed to be secular.

Others feel that at a time when the government is trying to encourage the teaching of what it calls traditional values in the classroom, the chaplaincy proposal is a means of linking these values with religion.

On this week's Encounter we'll be exploring these issues, and perhaps the best way to begin is to ask what exactly what a chaplain is. The government is yet to release its own chaplaincy guidelines, but if we look at what existing school chaplains do, we see that they wear a large number of different hats.

Gerhard Stanszus is a full-time chaplain at Rosebud Secondary College, a state school on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria. His job involves pastoral care in the form of student counselling, home visits, conducting outdoor activities like orienteering and bush camps, education in the form of seminars on love, sex and relationships and safe partying, participating in philosophy classes, and maintaining links between the school and the wider community, the churches, the local youth services, Rotary clubs and so on.

It's a lot to expect one person to undertake, but Gerhard Stanszus feels that the variety of roles is one of the attractions of the job.

Gerhard Stanszus: The diversity and independence of the role is a real big plus. You can almost form it to the needs of the school, school students, the staff, the parents, according to the skills that you bring to the job. So it is great diversity there. For me, seeing the fun and the engaging interactions in some of those activities I've mentioned, bear fruit. So that students are welcoming a contact, they're self-referring and saying 'he's safe to go and speak to.'

David Rutledge: Why do you think that is? What's 'safe' about you?

Gerhard Stanszus: Well, if a student has been in trouble with the hierarchy of the school, if they have already seen either the Principal or the year level coordinator, or they've been in trouble with a staff member and there's been a referral on, often there's a hope that they will self-refer, or they'll be at ease seeing someone that isn't directly a part of it, that is a little bit distant from that punitive - or that system in the school for 'correction', if you like.

David Rutledge: I guess that's in keeping with a certain characteristic of Christianity - it's anti-establishment, you know, Jesus was always getting into trouble with the authorities. Do you think, then, that part of the reason you're able to work in the way that you do, or part of your job description, is actually standing apart from that establishment aspect of the school?

Gerhard Stanszus: That can definitely help, and it has helped on many occasions. However, I wouldn't see it as polarised as that. It may seem that way to the students, and some of the staff, but generally it's not an issue with sort of an anti-establishment. In fact, my relationship with the Principal is a close ally, particularly when there are complex and difficult issues. It's great to be able to work with him, or for him to say 'I'd like to speak with you, close the door', and then a fairly curly issue can be brought up.

That's not to say that welfare coordinators and psychologists and the school nurse might not be involved also, but it is a fine line you're trying to work with them, work with the parents, maintain confidentiality when you're speaking to the student, and yet trying to guide them to a degree, within their best interests through the school, their achievements, their home life and so on.

David Rutledge: I suppose that your position, then, in liaising with the school, the teachers, the Principal the students and the parents - the interests of those three parties don't always match up, do they? I wonder if there's ever been any conflict, especially in matters of discipline, where you've had to maybe take sides, or you have decided not to take sides, but wished you could.

Gerhard Stanszus: It doesn't happen very often, thankfully. But with students who have come to you in confidence, if they're about to disclose something that is in that small category of self-harm, where they will either be harmed or might harm someone else, or where it's contrary to their well-being, their serious well-being, it's there that the conflict occurs. And I would need to make a referral on to the appropriate authorities, speak to the Principal. Usually it is not an issue. I know that the parents, I've been in situations where the parents are perhaps at me, ringing, asking what's going on, or -

David Rutledge: What sort of issue are we talking about here? Can you give me an example of a particular kind of situation where this conflict has come up?

Gerhard Stanszus: They're rare, but for instance: students that have had a big barney at home, no longer want to go home after school, have done a runner, perhaps landed at a friend's place. I'm aware of that, maybe one other teacher is aware of that. But they're not wanting parents involved, or the school involved in any way. That would be probably one of the trickiest.

But in all cases, in all of those cases, I seek to maintain confidentiality with the student, yet at the same time pull out all of the stops to encourage them not to burn their bridges, but to keep thinking of the parents in the loop - parents' friends, a grandmother, somebody - until there's either some conflict resolution happening, some healing happening. That would be one of the most difficult areas.

David Rutledge: Gerhard Stanszus, Chaplain at Rosebud Secondary College in Victoria.


Boy 1: I got in trouble because I was like writing graffiti and that, on walls and all that.

Boy 2: I got in trouble at this school for back-chatting Di, and I got expelled.

Teacher: You're not expelled, you're here!

Boy 2: Oh well, I was -

Teacher: You were out for a while.

Boy 2: Yeah.

Boy 3: I got in trouble for going missing for a weekend, then I had the coppers come to my door and like talk to me.

Girl: I got into trouble because of family problems, and I just didn't agree on what my family were saying or doing - and so I went my own way.

David Rutledge: Blacktown Youth College at Mount Druitt in Sydney's western suburbs is a private school but it doesn't charge fees, it relies on donations and the largesse of the New South Wales state government. It's a school for students aged 14 to 17 who have been asked to leave - or have chosen to leave - their previous high school.

Blacktown Youth College is under-resourced; the funding for their Youth Outreach service is about to run out, and they certainly don't have access to a chaplain. But then, they don't really want one, according to the Principal, Gabrielle McIntosh.

Gabrielle McIntosh: We have all sorts at this school. We have kids with behaviour problems, we have kids with aggression, we have kids with depression, suicide kids, kids who no-one knows what's wrong with them, but they've never opened their mouths for about three years. You have to remember that this school is located in the heart of western Sydney, and in the heart of entrenched chronic unemployment. Fifty percent of our kids are indigenous, and we know that unemployment is a big issue for that community, but it's also an issue for all our kids. Most of our parents really struggle to get jobs. Employment for men in the 21 to I think the 60 age group is around about 25% in this area. So the pointy end of globalisation is here.

And so when something goes wrong, extra wrong, in the family - maybe a brother or a sister develops a drug problem, or a grandparent becomes very ill - the pressure just becomes too much. And the adults do what all adults do, they play the 'it's OK' game. But it's the kids who actually know that it's not OK, and the behaviour and the unhappiness often manifests most strongly with them.

Regular schools try to cope, they often can't cope, they're not set up to cope. So they end up here.

David Rutledge: I want to ask you about values, and values in education, because we hear a lot of rhetoric in the media and from the government about the need for values and education. And I guess rightly or wrongly, some people would look at a lot of the students at this school and say that through no fault of their own, here is a really good example of the lack of values in our society today. Do you think it's true that the students here have suffered from a lack of values in education, and do you see your job as being partly to instil values of some kind?

Gabrielle McIntosh: Of all the problems our students have, values in education is the least of their problems. It is a complete furphy and a nonsense. Their problems relate to the earthly, nitty gritty problems of: how about a stable family, where people have jobs? How about living in a community which is supported by both state and federal governments to provide basic services, like decent schools and decent hospitals? How about a situation where when they leave school, they have a chance of getting a job? Youth unemployment in this area is around about the 30% mark. That's their real problem. And they have plenty of values, frustration values, because they desperately want something to be done. But like all powerless people, what can they do?

David Rutledge: Well, the government is talking about putting up finds for chaplaincy services for schools that want to avail themselves of that opportunity. How interested will you be in applying for funding for chaplaincy?

Gabrielle McIntosh: We are a secular school, so a chaplaincy is probably a divisive thing for us. We've had preliminary talks with staff, and the bottom line is well, OK, where would we go? If we had someone from the Catholic community, don't we offend the Church of England? If we have someone from the Church of England community, would we offend the Methodists? I mean, you know, it becomes divisive after a while - and at the end of the day, what do these people know about the lives and the struggles of kids, including indigenous people, in Mount Druitt? What do they know?

Now OK, we talked about maybe an indigenous counsellor, or someone from an indigenous church or community. However, a similar problem arises: what about the Maori community? What about the Islander community? Are they going to say 'look, are we not good enough, that we don't have people from our communities to be spiritual advisors?'

Look, we may end up doing what we do at this school in controversy, and that is give everybody a vote. Students, staff, everyone will have a vote. We may end up doing that - but within the framework of whether or not the staff think it's going to be ultimately just very divisive or not. If this was a kind of an optional program, I think it would work a lot better for a school like us. If you said to the schools, 'look, you could have a chaplaincy, you could have a school councillor, you could have a youth worker, you could have a connection to a university, to some sort of counselling program that they're running, we will fund a variety of options along these lines, and we want it to have a spiritual component', I think we'd be fine with that. But they need to allow for flexibility. It's a great irony that this government that stresses choice all the time, when it comes to education offers no choice.

Greg Hunt: This is an entirely voluntary program that no school need be part of, unless the school community - in terms of both the school council and the school staff bodies - chooses to do so. And no student need be part of it unless he or she wants to. So there's that extremely important idea of option or choice for the participation of individuals.

David Rutledge: That's Greg Hunt MP, the Federal Liberal Member for Flinders in Victoria. He's one a number of government figures who are backing the chaplaincy proposal. Greg Hunt says that the proposal has been drafted as a response to requests from the school communities in his electorate. He also says that chaplains can and do act as counsellors and youth outreach workers, but that they also provide something extra that secular services don't.

Greg Hunt: Not every school would like a chaplain, not every school believes it's near the top of their priority list. But for many schools it is a priority, and for many schools it's something which they would take if they're able to provide some funds themselves, have some funds provided by the government, and some funds provided by the community.

David Rutledge: But why chaplains? What evidence is there of a need for pastoral care - as opposed to, say, psychological counselling?

Greg Hunt: The first thing here - and that's a very fair question, may I say - is that there are things that a chaplain can provide which students themselves seek. So if it's a time of crisis - it might be a bereavement, it might be a family breakdown - sometimes students will want to ask questions and seek answers to some of the higher questions, and they find that a chaplain on many occasions will be the preferred approach for students. Not always. Students will balance and choose between them.

David Rutledge: I wonder, though, if some schools are less likely to take up the funding offer for reasons that have to do with other things than 'well, we don't particularly feel the need for it'. I'm thinking about schools with students from a broad range of cultural backgrounds - and in a lot of the urban multi-ethnic schools, they might be interested in a chaplain, but then there's the question of do you get a Christian, or a Muslim, or a Jew? And if you get a Muslim, do you get a Sunni or a Shiite? And people are saying that in these sorts of schools, the chaplaincy scheme actually brings the danger of religious division.

Greg Hunt: Well, I think the simple answer is: if the school has the slightest doubt about whether it would be appropriate for them, and if it would be anything other than constructive, then they certainly shouldn't put themselves at risk. It's an utterly voluntary proposal, which is over and above what's available to schools already.

However, there is another option here, and that is that what we're essentially funding is the equivalent of $20,000 per school for a full-time or a five-day equivalent chaplain. It may be that schools might want to pool chaplains in an area, and they could be from different faiths. I know in the Reference Group - which Julie Bishop the Education Minister announced only recently - that included representatives from the Jewish day schools, from the Islamic Education in Schools Council, a range of different faiths from the Catholic Education Commission, so there's quite a range of opportunities there. It's non-specific in its religious denomination.

David Rutledge: One other objection to the scheme is that you can only really get a certain amount of chaplaincy for your $20,000 as you've suggested. And the schools applying for the funding are likely to be private schools that already have a chaplaincy service in place. So you're looking at, again, federal funds going to the private education sector rather than the state education sector where perhaps it's most needed.

Greg Hunt: Well, what we see in Queensland at the moment is, as I understand it, about two hundred government schools who currently have chaplains - in Victoria, sixty. Our estimation is that this may double or more in Victoria the number of state schools that take up chaplains. We can't say for certain how many will do it, but as a lot of the funding is raised privately, and sometimes through the - it might be the Scripture Union in Queensland, or the relevant bodies in other states - they will then have more funds to share with the less well-off schools.

David Rutledge: Greg Hunt, the Federal Liberal MP for Flinders in Victoria.

Opposition to the government's chaplaincy scheme is coming from some surprising quarters. When the proposal was first announced, it was expected that evangelical Christian churches would welcome it with open arms. But within the Anglican Diocese of Sydney, a well-known bastion of evangelicalism, the proposal has received the thumbs-down.

Bryan Cowling is Principal at Thomas Hassall Anglican College in western Sydney. He's also the incoming CEO of the Anglican Education Commission. Bryan Cowling believes that care and counselling are best provided by existing full-time teachers, and that if taxpayers' money goes into providing school chaplains, religious education overall may suffer.

Bryan Cowling: My observation over the years is that when crises occur in schools, the people who are best placed to help students to deal with the crisis per se, are the people that they know best, they have confidence in. Even bringing in outside so-called secular counsellors will not be as effective as somebody who's on the site, on the staff, being at that point of reference.

David Rutledge: A teacher?

Bryan Cowling: A teacher, whom the kids know and respect and understand. I don't think a clergyman from outside, who's not known to the students, can do much more than just offer platitudes in those sorts of crises. It's the person that they've got confidence in over a period of time - perhaps even seen the teacher go through their own crises, and are therefore able to identify. Whether it's an accident in the school, suicide, or whatever, I think that is the best way to go.

Therefore, making sure that we've got more people in schools equipped to give that sort of counsel - that is, upskilling the teaching service in many ways, upskilling counsellors, making sure those counsellors are there five days a week, not one day a week - is a far better way to address that particular social phenomenon. And that's where I would (and the Anglican church would) rather see the government putting its money into government schools where they don't have those sorts of people on their staff already, and drop this whole notion of it being a chaplain, that carries some sort of religious overtones.

David Rutledge: I think some of our listeners would be surprised to hear somebody from the Sydney Anglican diocese speaking against a proposal which in other quarters has been greeted as a great opportunity for evangelism, and for getting the word out.

Bryan Cowling: Well, we don't see this chaplaincy program being a means of evangelism, we see it in terms of what the government's talking about, as adding something into the mix to address pastoral care and student welfare. Where we come from is we are grateful that in New South Wales we have access through law to public schools, to provide special religious education. And that provides the churches of all denominations the opportunity to have multiples of people who are trained, accredited, paid for by the churches - or not paid for at all - working in schools, teaching their respective faiths to those students whose parents permit that to be the case. In other words, it's voluntary, students can opt out of that situation. And we think that's a privilege which we have which we don't wish to see eroded. And most of the major faiths would take that view.

Our concern would be that if the taxpayer is paying for chaplains to come into schools, that somehow or other that might lead to the removal of that access which we have for teaching our faith to many students in government schools.

David Rutledge: Why would that necessarily be the case, why do you feel that the existing system would be threatened by a federal chaplaincy system?

Bryan Cowling: Well, I think you've got to see down the track. The Commonwealth government is offering this program for three years. It doesn't profess to provide all the money for the cost of these chaplains. There'll be an expectation that communities will provide money as well. History shows that when things get embedded in schools by the Commonwealth government, the expectation is that the state governments pick up the tab thereafter. If the New South Wales government, whatever political persuasion, is left with a situation where we have these people called chaplains in schools, and they have to pick up the tab, then the taxpayers of New South Wales may well ask the question 'well, why should we be allowing the churches, different religions, free access to schools to teach their faith, when in fact the taxpayer's also paying for paid chaplains to be added to the mix in schools?'

David Rutledge: Bryan Cowling, Principal at Thomas Hassal Anglican College in Sydney.


Girl 1: I wouldn't say I'm that religious - like I do, you know, read the Quran and stuff - because there's radical sort of extreme religious, and then there's, like, not so religious. I'm sort of in between, because I don't really - I don't believe some of what the radicals say, I just sort of make up my own mind about my religion.

Girl 2: I'm kind of not that religious as well. But still I follow whatever I've been asked to do, and I think that to learn about other religions is really important. Really, really important. Like, in our school, when we have Scripture classes and all this stuff, Muslim students go to their own religion, and Christians go to their own classes and all this stuff. But I think we should all be together, to learn about each other.

Girl 3: There's just so much pressure on young people today; we have so many choices to make. For example, school, OK, like the careers that we can take on board when we get out are just so much broader, and you can do so many more things these days. As well, like communication and the media has improved, so we have a lot more perspectives. You know, back, say, twenty or thirty years ago, the government had so much more power over what you thought, or what you believed, or what you heard, in the newspapers or whatever it was. But these days, because we can have so many more perspectives to form our own opinions, it's harder.

David Rutledge: Muslim students at Auburn Girls High School in Sydney, and we'll be hearing more from them a little later.

The government has taken pains to point out about a school chaplain doesn't have to be a Christian, the funding scheme allows for all faiths.

But how is the chaplaincy scheme going to work for Muslim communities? Islam doesn't traditionally have the equivalent of a chaplain, and the idea of an imam going into a school to a counsellor - rather than as a religious teacher - is an unusual one. Which doesn't necessarily mean that it wouldn't work. But again, there's the question of how badly a chaplain's services would be needed among Muslim students.

Abdul Rahman Najmeddine is President of the Australian Council for Islamic Education in Schools, and he's also on the National School Chaplaincy Reference Group that's been set up by the federal government to give advice on how to implement the funding scheme.

Abdul Rahman Najmeddine: I think a chaplain is a man that can deliver the right understanding of belief through a certain religion. Since Islam is a religion of belief and action at the same time, the role of chaplain I can see in Islam is for someone who is knowledgeable in the religion, and then deliver the Friday sermon in a way that should work people through harmony, and if you're practising the religion the right way.

David Rutledge: So you're saying that in theory, a Muslim chaplain - if you had such a thing - would be a figure of religious authority whose job would be to promote Islam.

Abdul Rahman Najmeddine: Not with authority. People can listen, can agree and can disagree with him.

David Rutledge: But his role would be to promote the Islamic faith.

Abdul Rahman Najmeddine: That's right.

David Rutledge: The definition of a chaplain that I've been getting from talking to other people for this program is that a chaplain is someone who might be motivated by their religion, but they don't see it as their job to promote their religion. And a chaplain in a school is just there, if a student has some sort of personal problem or issue, the chaplain might simply listen and just provide a sympathetic ear. Now why couldn't an imam work in that way?

Abdul Rahman Najmeddine: Because I think if we're talking about problems, about student problems or etc., we do have student counsellors in schools that can look after these issues. In our schools and the schools I represent, we do have theoretically what you can call a chaplain, and this is an employee, an actual employee at those colleges, and he's a qualified teacher in the first place, and has to be a qualified teacher in the first place, taking the classes etc. But at the same time that man, or that figure, does conduct the Friday prayer, which is the Friday sermon, and delivers things that are heavily based on values in Islam and not actually promoting Islam itself as a religion.

David Rutledge: So when you say that you already have counselling services provided by people who are Muslims, and you have religious instruction in schools, do you think then that really anything that a chaplain might provide is already being provided?

Abdul Rahman Najmeddine: I would say it is provided in the schools. But I think instead of spending the money on chaplains that they visit the school once or twice a week - if this is what they're coming up with, I think it will be just a worthless activity. On the contrary, if we can arrange to spend some money on inter-faith activities, on dialogue, on people getting to know each other, to accept each other, that would achieve much, much better results.

I think we are worrying about students; we should be more worried about the community itself, about parents. Because parents are the ones who are carrying all of these old beliefs - and maybe to some extent fanatical ideas - across.

David Rutledge: And so I suppose inter-faith programs for students could be a way of getting the students to carry those values back into the home, maybe educating their parents?

Abdul Rahman Najmeddine: That's what we're hoping to achieve.

David Rutledge: And so do you think, then, that these sorts of programs are better use for the sort of money that the government is making available?

Abdul Rahman Najmeddine: I think that would be much, much better used in this way.

David Rutledge: Will you be arguing for that on the Reference Group?

Abdul Rahman Najmeddine: Definitely, definitely.

David Rutledge: Abdul Rahman Najmeddine, President of the Australian Council for Islamic Education in Schools.

Well, back at Auburn Girls' High School in western Sydney, I spoke with a group of students from Muslim and Christian backgrounds, some of whom recently participated in a special inter-faith education program, but all of whom thought that simply being at a religiously mixed school provides a valuable education in itself.

Girl 1: I'm not that religious. I try and go to church every Sunday, but it's kind of hard, yes. But you know I'm still kind of religious, I have my beliefs and what I value. But coming here, when I first came here, like, I never knew about these other religions here, but by learning from them it was interesting, because it's so like fascinating what other religions are out there.

Girl 2: Well for me I am religious, but not fully. I do have my standards and my values, of my religion - but then at the same time I learn. Because at the school, like they said we have different religions and it's interesting to learn about each and every religion.

And there's a period of time where the Muslim people, they fast, and they fast for quite a while - a month, yes. And during that period we respect them at that time, and it's so cool how we work together to help them, like, keep their values and their standards. And you know, we try not to bring up any food, any topic about food, or try not to eat in front of them. We sometimes forget, like when we have lollies, it's easy for us, we always share, but then we sometimes forget that they're fasting. But at the same time we respect them, and they understand us as well.

David Rutledge: So you're getting a religious education at a state school? that's interesting.

Girl 2: Yeah. And at the same time, even though we don't learn about them in class - like we don't have classes where we learn about other religions - we learn outside of class, like during lunch and stuff.

Girl 3: You get a religious education at a state school - well, when you say that, it sounds like we're coming here and we have certain classes based on religion. But you know, it's just basically just walking around, certain things, I mean like Islam is just so obvious to everybody, like we wear scarves, you know what I mean, you can't deny the fact that you're Muslim. And as well, like fasting, it's very obvious, like the canteen basically goes bankrupt during that time, because there's so many Muslim people at the school.

Sharon Ford: About 86% of our students are from a Muslim background - but within that, there's a whole range of girls from different countries, and from families that are very newly arrived, probably from Iraq and Afghanistan, and an increasing number of girls from African countries. Those families are more likely to be refugees. And we have a number of Turkish families who are well established here, a number of Lebanese families who have been here for some time. So although on paper it looks like it's a very culturally homogenous group, that 86% of Muslim girls is quite diverse in their family backgrounds, and how long their families have been here, and in their family situations.

David Rutledge: Sharon Ford is the Principal at Auburn Girls' High School. She has concerns about the prospect of employing a government-funded chaplain.

Sharon Ford: Hypothetically I'd say the best scenario, if it were possible, would be that several schools could pool their $20,000 perhaps with a community agency. For us that might be something like Bernardo's Auburn, or one of the Granville multicultural centres - and actually not purchase a chaplain, but purchase someone else who could provide family and support for the student, something in more in terms of a trained youth worker or a family counsellor, someone who could provide the pastoral care but of whose training I was more sure.

David Rutledge: In a school that's 86% Muslim, what about the idea of getting, say, an imam to be here part-time just to listen to the students, to sort of hear some of their problems - would that not be an interesting experiment?

Sharon Ford: I wouldn't be an experiment that I'd be keen to do, and I'd have to say that with the Commonwealth government funding it, they would I guess say 'yes an imam, or someone from a Muslim background is fine in a school' - but I think that conflicts with a lot of what they're saying about imams and how the Muslim faith is promoted. So I think there's be a straight conflict straight away between yes, technically we wouldn't discriminate and we would look for someone from the cultural background of the girls, but there would continue to be practical questions about what's being promoted, and is it radical, and does it conflict with Australian values. So I think we'd be in a catch-22 straight away. Even if I was keen to go down the path - which I'm not - I would be left with the worry of what's being promoted, and does it sit well with what the school promotes generally, and what we would want all schools to promote in terms of a coherent just society.

But I'd have to say - swapping to my parent hat - I'd have the same concerns in my children's school. If the person was a youth worker from my church, I'd probably be delighted. But if it was a youth worker from another church I might have questions, and I'd expect other families to have the same questions. I don't think even if you accept the proposition that it's a good idea for student support, that the practicalities don't promote a lot of difficulties in terms of who do you listen to, who do you employ, how much trust do you give to them, and when students do speak to them, what accountability do they have to the school to pass on a serious welfare issue or a series DOCS issue, and are they promoting values that align with the values that schools promote?

David Rutledge: You say that you think specifically religious values and religious education should stay within the families - and yet I was interested to hear that some of the girls from this school were involved not so long ago in a kind of values education project, which was also an inter-faith project. Can you tell me about that?

Sharon Ford: I can. I'll tell you why we were involved, for a start. Our families are very much based around Auburn, and it's very insular. As things have changed in the world with September 11 and Cronulla, our families are much more withdrawing into Auburn. Understandably, I can see why they do it. But it does mean that for our girls, and probably for other schools in the area, they don't have an experience of wider Australian culture. The fear is making them more insular.

So I think that a really important part of my role is to give each of my girls economic independence. If I can give her the skills that will make her employable, then I've given her a genuine start I life - and a big part of that is to get the girls out beyond Auburn, and seeing other jobs, other people, other ways of being. Because if I don't help them change their thinking, and reflect on what's possible, then the community's going to remain insular.

So when we were approached by a Turkish group to look at this inter-faith program, it seemed like a good idea, because it provided an opportunity to question and think without telling them the answer. So it provided an opportunity to look at the Muslim faith, to look at the Jewish faith, and at Christianity, and then meet with other young people, and debate and understand. And I think the fundamental thing that will change stereotypes is real people meeting with real people, and seeing how much they have in common. So it wasn't something about promoting a particular value, but about allowing girls to think and analyse, and meet with other young people from different backgrounds and challenge stereotypes. That's my motivation.

David Rutledge: So who did they meet with, and how was it structured?

Sharon Ford: It was structured initially with someone coming in from the Turkish organisation to speak to them over a ten week period in their sport time, about the three different faiths. And then it was capped off with all the participants in all the schools - most of which were non-government - meeting at a local non-government school, on a Sunday and a Monday, getting to know each other, doing a series of workshops, talking about their faith.

David Rutledge: These were Jews and Christians and Muslims.

Sharon Ford: Yes, Jews, Christians, Muslims. We provided the Muslim girls, but there were a whole range of other schools involved.

David Rutledge: It's interesting, because it seems to me that this is a way - I mean, you say you're opposed to chaplains in schools, partly because it's the incursion of religion into secular public education - and yet here you can see a way in which religion isn't ruled out of court in public education.

Sharon Ford: I don't rule it out, and I strongly support the scripture teachers having access, our Islander girls meet for prayer during a break on a Tuesday - but I want it to be in context of families knowing what their daughters are being involved in, and giving permission, and the girls thinking it through. And I guess in small bites, where I'm confident that the program also has our teachers involved.

So through that whole program, we had a teacher present, we had teachers at the workshops. I had a sense that the program had a quality behind it, and a certain equity, certainly it had a view that it did want to promote understanding of the cultures, and I was comfortable with it. I'm less comfortable with one person from a small church, or a small mosque, where I'm not so sure what's being said. Adolescents are vulnerable. And anything that leaves them open to manipulation - whether it's a radical Muslim cleric, or a radical Anglican evangelical - causes me distress. I think we have a real responsibility as anyone who works with adolescents to be very respectful of their search and their faith and to not impose values. Yes, families do, as they bring their children up, and I certainly have brought my children up within the Christian faith. But we need to be very careful about who's saying what.

David Rutledge: Sharon Ford, Principal at Auburn Girls' High School in Sydney.

So how do the girls at Auburn High feel about the prospect of a chaplain or religious figure coming into the school to act as a counsellor?

Girl 1: I don't go to counselling, but I'm aware a few of my friends do, to have counselling.

David Rutledge: What sort of issues?

Girl 1: Things like depression and things like that. But it is pretty secular, and I think they'd be more hesitant to talk about their problems if there was a religious figure there. Because you know, we're young and we do a lot of things that are considered wrong in our religion. So the last thing you want to do is go and confess, and look bad in front of the religious guy, or whoever it is that's sitting there. So we would probably not tell.

Girl 2: I don't mind. See, with Islam, it opens you up to values that you need in school. And so I think when you have problems, like if you disagree with someone between your religion with some student, you can go and talk to this person see which one is right, because he knows how we're confused with other religions and stuff. Yes, this person could tell you like what's right and what's wrong.

Girl 3: I don't know, I don't think I would.

David Rutledge: Why not?

Girl 3: The whole, you know, hesitant thing. Like what if he tells me I've been wrong all this time? I would rather talk to someone who doesn't know - maybe someone who knows a lot about my culture, but doesn't follow it, because I just feel more comfortable that way.

Girl 4: I think we should have someone like a religious guy in our school, because it doesn't matter which religion he follows or anything, it just helps you in a way, like, in different views. I get different ideas from different people, and it doesn't matter their religion. That's what I think.

Girl 5: Just the title, 'religious' - no, I won't talk. Seriously, come on, if I'm going to have a Christian priest stand in front of me, he's going to want to know what I've done wrong. And I'm going to expose everything that I've done, you know, he's just going to say 'oh, you're bad, you're bad, you're bad'. So why would I open up to him in the first place? I'd turn to my mates instead.

David Rutledge: If he's doing his job, though - because what a chaplain is supposed to do is not to say 'you're bad', a chaplain is just supposed to be there, to listen to your problems, and then maybe if it's a serious problem he'd maybe refer you on to a counsellor or something like that. Would you trust him to be non-judgmental?

Girl 5: Yeah, I would trust him, but I still wouldn't open up. As much as he'd keep telling me 'open up, open up' - no thanks. You know, you're still religious, OK, just that word 'religious' - ugh. If they're religious, they going to obviously put their religion first. So they're going to still use some of their morals and values in their mind, and then they're going to try and convert it into us.

David Rutledge: Students at Auburn Girls' High School in Sydney.

As we've heard, chaplains can be social workers, they can be counsellors, and they can be community outreach workers. One thing they're not supposed to be is religious evangelists, which can make it a bit tricky if a student specifically want to talk about God. But how often do students come to the chaplain with a specifically spiritual or religious issue? Gerhard Stanszus.

Gerhard Stanszus: Very rarely I would say specifically, or at least not very often from a student's viewpoint are they speaking religiously or spiritually. However, on issues such as if there's been a death in the family, there's almost an immediate 'where's the chaplain?' That came from a mum the other day, where we had a very tragic accident from a school leaver in our area just last year, and their mother had many ex-students and students around at her home.

From TV shows, the paranormal, sort of weird things like that, those sorts of things come up in discussion. Students in a way demanding freedom, independence from protective parents sometimes. Sometimes overly protective religious backgrounds, that would be the main religious spiritual component - but on the whole it's pretty rare.

David Rutledge: So when people say that they're worried about chaplains in state schools, that they think that this somehow means sneaking religion in by the back door, are you saying that's not really a serious concern?

Gerhard Stanszus: I don't think so - not at our school, not with my chaplaincy, not with the model that I adhere to, or that I've developed at the school. I don't think it's a really big issue of evangelising or proselytising. I'm well aware of the workplace that I work in, a state secular secondary college environment, I think I work well within that. It's certainly not preachy, it's living with the interests of others. For instance - this is rare - a student at the beginning of the year asked (this is really rare, it shocked me) he said 'I'd like to become a Christian', and I almost asked 'why?' And he said 'look, I've learnt a little bit about my grandparents and my grandparents' background, and they are Christians, and I want to take some of that on board'.

David Rutledge: That's a really interesting case, because as you know, the chaplaincy guidelines in Victoria explicitly refer to a chaplain as someone who provides a Christian presence in the school, but who doesn't - and shouldn't - evangelise, openly proselytise. So if a student comes up to you and says 'I want to become a Christian', does that put you in a difficult position?

Gerhard Stanszus: Well, not in that one incidental case, because the question was specific from this student. He had an idea, and it lead to exploration by him.

David Rutledge: How did you respond to the student when he said 'I want to become a Christian'?

Gerhard Stanszus: I wanted to investigate where he was coming from at first. What did he think it was about? Was it about his links and thoughtfulness to other people in the community? Was it the love that his grandparents showed to him?

David Rutledge: But you stopped short of saying 'well, that's great - let's pray together'?

Gerhard Stanszus: Actually I didn't do any of that. Perhaps some would say I should have. But I left that to him in his context and family context. I've had - what would you call it, what's that clichéd term - 'the dark night of the soul'? - I've had a few of those, where I'm thinking 'my goodness, here I am in a school, perhaps by others I'm seen to be - I have an immediate window of opportunity to reach the unsaved'. But I must say it just doesn't figure like that, I don't have a fear for 'the lost', as it were.

I think that we are endowed with many spiritual awarenesses, spiritual gifts or values. And if anything, that's my drive and motivator, is to unearth and expose and celebrate and those spiritual connections that we I believe all have, but that may lay dormant or that are forced out by our current climate economic rationalism - whatever you want to call it, our consumerism. If I could draw that out, I would like to make that more of my mission, my work within the school.

David Rutledge: Gerhard Stanszus, school chaplain at Rosebud Secondary College in Victoria.

Critics of the government's chaplaincy program have argued that it implicitly links religion with values, as though all religious values were inherently good and in line with whatever values the government might be trying to promote - and that's a potential problem, according to Bryan Cowling, Principal at Sydney's Thomas Hassall Anglican College.

Bryan Cowling: The government, in putting forward this proposal, which links the sort of attempt to address a social phenomenon with a word called chaplain which has religious overtones - my hunch is that they really haven't thought through the implications of that over the next ten years.

The government in Canberra are saying that they wish to be the ones who approve the people that go into schools as chaplains. This is quite an odd sort of arrangement. There aren't any other programs I'm aware of where the names of the people involved have to be submitted to Canberra to be approved. Now, that may suggest that the government has a very keen eye on who is appointed, and there'll be security checks and ASIO checks on the people that are given these sort of roles, which is hardly part of the democratic way of society.

On the other hand, the government may be surprised - any government may be surprised - if down the track, some of these people that they've let loose with their money in these schools, become people who prick the conscience of the government of the day, in terms of their own policies. And the government will only have itself to blame for having let loose a 'loose cannon' in terms of these people who are peddling their ideas, who are under the guise of spirituality.


David Rutledge: On ABC Radio National, you've been listening to Encounter.

Guests this week were Gerhard Stanszus, Gabrielle McIntosh, Greg Hunt, Bryan Cowling, Abdul Rahman Najmeddine and Sharon Ford. We also hear from Craig Smith, Louis Lawrence, Rhys Murnane, Melissa Ward and Dean Trikilis from Blacktown Youth College, and from Auburn Girls' High School we heard from Ward al-Ghurani, Aliya al-Saady, Zainab Alttahir, Hawraa al-Saidi, Jennifer Taufa, and Ellie Mafi. Studio producer this week was Angus Kingston.

Thanks to all of them, thanks also to John Jeybus and to series producer, Florence Spurling.


Gerhard Stanszus
Chaplain, Rosebud Secondary College, Victoria
Gabrielle McIntosh
Principal, Blacktown-Bidwill Youth College, Sydney
Greg Hunt MP
Federal Member for Flinders, Victoria
Bryan Cowling
Principal, Thomas Hassall Anglican College, Sydney
Abdul Rahman Najmeddine
President, Australian Council for Islamic Education in Schools
Sharon Ford
Principal, Auburn Girls' High School, Sydney


Rickard Jäverling
Two Times Five Lullaby
CD details: Yesternow Recordings YES004CD (2006)
Two Times Five Lullaby
Rickard Jäverling
Two Times Five Lullaby
CD details: Yesternow Recordings YES004CD (2006)
Heavenly Birds pt. 1
Rickard Jäverling
Two Times Five Lullaby
CD details: Yesternow Recordings YES004CD (2006)


David Rutledge