The impact of religious diversity and revitalization on inter-religious education for citizenship and human rights

The unanticipated rise of religious diversity and the re-entry of religion to the public sphere have radically increased the need and demand for education about religions – how they contribute to social and cultural capital – and about the management of religious diversity. The global movement of people and cultures has brought religious diversity to nearly every major city. With diversity has come a renewed interest in the religious identity of others and how to incorporate religious diversity in ways that produce social cohesion. Religious diversity has also raised interest in a values discourse where once atheistic secularity prevailed, made faith-based social and health service delivery both more appealing to governments and more difficult to deliver, and has challenged societies to accommodate a wider range of religious needs and lifestyles. Policies designed to promote social justice and peace have little chance of success without taking seriously the religious dimensions to the issues involved. This context makes clear the need for opportunities to learn about the religions in a society at all levels of education – opportunities that include direct experience of the ‘other’, curricula that appreciate the worlds of faith, spirituality and religion rather than demeaning them, education that provides both historical depth and local reality. Some of this education will be in school, some in remedial work required for a generation or two of leaders who have been raised in ignorance of religion, or trained to despise it.

Must Dewey and Kierkegaard’s inquiry for world peace be violent?

Amongst the many aims of education, surely the pursuit of global peace must be one of the most significant.The mandate of UNESCO is to pursue world peace through education by primarily promoting collaboration.The sort of collaboration that UNESCO endorses involves democratic dialogue,where various persons from differing backgrounds can come together,listen,negotiate and discuss possible ways in which peace might be pursued.While this sort of democratic dialogue with its associated free intellectual inquiry is more readily acceptable for issues dealing with problems in the realm of physical nature, it is not so easily tolerated in the realm of ethics and values. Indeed inquiry into the realm of ethics by Kierkegaard has been described by Levinas to be a form of violence. Similarly John Dewey’s work has been included in a list of the ten most harmful books by some conservatives in the United States because he promoted inquiry into morals and religion. Dewey argued against the assumption that there are two-realms—one physical and one moral.He and Kierkegaard both encouraged democratic inquiry into ethics,which is the sort of collaboration recognised by UNESCO as being necessary if we are to pursue world peace.Yet such investigations can be considered by some to be violent and harmful. It is argued here that pursuing inquiries into ethics and aims of education,while appearing to challenge the status quo, should not be construed as being violent but rather should be understood as democratic and educative.

Academics,think tanks and journalists : the trouble with expert opinion, empirical evidence and bilingual education

This book reports the findings of the Australian News media and Indigenous policymaking 1988-2008 ARC Discovery Project

Reciprocity and Indigenous knowledge in research

This book reports the findings of the Australian news media and indigenous policymaking 1988-2008 ARC Discovery Project.

Teaching or preaching — Max Charlesworth and religious education

In this essay I elaborate on the theoretical framework – that of Millian liberalism – that Max Charlesworth brought to many public issues, including that of the relation between education and religion. I will then apply this framework to a debate in which I have been recently involved myself: a debate around the provision of religious instruction in public schools. In the first section I expound Charlesworth’s rejection of secularism in education in a liberal pluralist state and his defence of faith-based schooling. In the second section I uncover the religious motivations behind the Victorian government’s 1950 amendments to the apparently secularist Victorian Education Act of 1872. In section three, I explore the notion of secularism more fully and suggest that the struggle between those who espouse religious instruction in state schools and those who oppose it while advocating a more general form of education about religion is a symptom of a deeper tension between liberalism and communitarianism within the culture of modernist, liberal states.

Reassessing the Holy Reich: leading Nazis' views on confession, community and 'Jewish' materialism

 Returning to the Journal of Contemporary History debate on The Holy Reich, this article argues that the notion of 'positive Christianity' as  Nazi 'religious system' has been largely invented. It offers a close analysis of significant public statements on National socialism by three leading Nazis: Adolf Hitler, Gottfried Feder and Alfred Rosenberg.

Improving the value of the national curriculum through ethics and the religious

Ethics and religion are currently being considered for inclusion into Australia's national curriculum. This paper argues that such a consideration ought to be founded upon an education for democracy, where students are encouraged to become critical inquirers. It is also contended here that an engagement with ethics and the religious has a lot of potential for enhancing the educative value of our national curriculum because currently ACARA lacks any aspirational purposes for education and is merely focused upon the technical concerns regarding teaching and learning.

On Person Authentication by Fusing Visual and Thermal Face Biometrics

Recognition algorithms that use data obtained by imaging faces in the thermal spectrum are promising in achieving invariance to extreme illumination changes that are often present in practice. In this paper we analyze the performance of a recently proposed face recognition algorithm that combines visual and thermal modalities by decision level fusion. We examine (i) the effects of the proposed data preprocessing in each domain, (ii) the contribution to improved recognition of different types of features, (iii) the importance of prescription glasses detection, in the context of both 1-to-N and 1-to-1 matching (recognition vs. verification performance). Finally, we discuss the significance of our results and, in particular, identify a number of limitations of the current state-of-the-art and propose promising directions for future research.

Souvenirs of the senses: collaborative and cross-artform makings

Souvenir hunters are often limited in their selection of souvenirs to objects that evoke an iconic and/or generic relationship to place. For example, a small-scale replica of the Eiffel Tower might substitute for a whole range of other more personal responses to the sensory experience of being in Paris. This paper reports on a collaborative and cross-artform five-day workshop, “Souvenirs of the Senses”, conducted in Qatar in early 2013 as part of Tasmeem Doha: Hybrid Making, a biennial international art and design conference. Two of the three workshop leaders, Patrick West and Jondi Keane, were Australian-based visitors whereas workshop leader Valerie Jeremijenko is permanently based in Qatar. There were five workshop participants from a diverse range of international and Qatari backgrounds. One of the conference themes, “Made in Qatar”, heightened our attention to what it means to be spending time in, and making things in, one place as opposed to any other place. What did it mean to be making something in a country where so many things have to be imported? Building on this line of thought, the second conference theme, “Hybrid Making”, suggested possibilities for undoing traditional modes of souvenir making as part of the creation of more complex objects that might be sutured to the singular experiences of place that happen when a.) established regimes of tourism are disrupted, and b.) experiences of place are curated via a focused awareness of the operations of the senses as sustained within our collaborative, cross-artform workshop environment. What attracts our attention is how objects ripe for “souveniring”, when they are considered as perceptual systems, suggest new ways of experimenting with the fabrication of objects and of artistic and individual relationships to place, and further, how hybrid souvenirs affect the way in which a place is re-membered (put together) and re-made in memory.

Erasure, exclusion by inclusion, and the absence of intersectionality: introducing bisexuality in education

Even though many schools and educational systems, from elementary to tertiary, state that they endorse antihomophobic policies, pedagogies, and programs, there appears to be an absence of education about, and affirmation of, bisexuality, and minimal specific attention to bi-phobia in curriculum, policy, and student welfare. Bisexuality continues to fall into the gap between the binary of heterosexuality and homosexuality across all educational sectors. These absences and erasures leave bisexual students, family members, and educators feeling silenced and invisibilized within school communities. Indeed, these absences and erasures have been considered a major factor in bisexual young people, family members, and educators in school communities experiencing worse mental, emotional, sexual, and social health than their homosexual or heterosexual counterparts. Also of interest is the persistence of bisexual erasure in adult-developed resources and programs, even though there is increasing evidence of sexual identities and practices in youth subcultures that are adopting shifting discursive and societal constructs of sexuality, characterized by notions of fluidity, ambisexuality, and a reluctance to label their sexuality according to the heterosexual/homosexual binary. The articles in this issue profoundly engage with and problematize the three impediments to education systems when those systems engage with sexual diversity instead of sexual duality, namely, erasure, exclusion by inclusion into gay and lesbian categories, and the absence of intersectionality (wherein other facets of identity and experience that interweave with sexuality are not taken into account, such as class, gender, Indigeneity/Aboriginality, ethnicity, geographical location, and religion). 

The experience of Singapore in raising awareness of natural and cultural resources

The city-state of Singapore has a major role in the urban development. Majority of the innovative projects are initiated by the government agencies. For this paper, I would like to highlight the two distinct themes of innovation that, I believe preoccupied the authority for its urban issues, they are innovation which concern nature and culture. Land in Singapore is scarce. Natural resources are strictly protected. At the same time they are challenged to return the maximum benefit to their own population. The water catchment area and the prime forest on the whole island is the most valuable natural resources to be preserved. The paper will demonstrate how Singapore challenges with its own resources (water and greenery) in which the holistic planning around these themes become more than just spaces of protection but integrated with the public space system and turned into more valuable spaces for the well being of its population. The second theme is the issue related to culture. Singapore's economy is the most advance compare to other Southeast Asian countries, however when it comes to culture and identity, the city state struggles with the over constructed image of branding Singapore's culture. The paper will discuss several examples around the theme of arts and culture, how the city state bench-mark itself with the world class cities. It is one of the most challenging topic in urban planning and policy making. It is worth discussing on its success and failure. We can learn form Singapore that innovation at the level of policy maker can be achieved in some urban aspects such as the management of natural resources and urban design projects related to it. However when it comes to the issue related to art and culture, the top down policy alone cannot assure the achievement of city's identity as it aspired. Tracing the historical development of the environmental and cultural policies of Singapore the paper intends to study and analyze various case studies reflecting these attempts of natural and cultural instillation. In the process of comparison of these two drastically contrasting actors and approaches, the paper will argue that it has mostly been driven by economic aims, and careful thought. The results have been limited and restrictive. Further arguing that 'creativity' is the essential factor of arts and culture, it evaluates the authenticity and the ultimate implications on cultural spirit.

Report of Captain A. B. Thomas, naval commandant on the Victorian Navy : from 1883 to 1886, together with regulations for permanent naval forces and naval brigade

Details the operations of the Victorian Navy for the period 1883 to 1886, including information on ships, training, stores, list of officers on the active and unattached list, list of ships including their armament, and the regulations under which the navy ran.

School principals and racism: responding to Aveling

This study responds to Nado Aveling's call in ‘Anti-racism in Schools: A question of leadership?’ (Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 2007, 28(1), 69–85) for further investigation into racism in Australian schools. Aveling's interview study concluded that an overwhelming number of school principals denied the presence of racism in their schools, and that there were no discernible differences in how principals in different schools constructed racism. In contrast, our research found that school principals' constructions of cultural racism are strongly influenced by their school contexts. We elucidate these differences examining the various intersections between race, class and religion deployed by principals in different sites, and argue for the utility of examining and theorising cultural racism using an intersectional approach. By bringing context into our analysis we provide a more nuanced insight into the different ways in which racism is constituted and understood by Australian school principals.

Domesticating cosmopolitanism: Charmian Clift’s women’s column in the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Herald in the 1960s

When novelist Charmian Clift returned to Australia in 1964 after 14 years in England and Greece, she was commissioned to write a women’s column in the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Herald. Her topics ranged widely, from food and drink, migrants and hospitality, famine and peace, children and religion, pop music and Aborigines to travel and housewives. By all accounts Clift struck a chord with her readers, her feel for connecting the vagaries of everyday life with historical and global events and social shifts made hers a distinctive voice in the daily press. This article explores the cosmopolitan outlook of Clift’s newspaper column: a world of hospitality and travel based on a common humanity, a perspective that neither feared nor favoured class, caste and colour, all the while not shying away from criticisms of the moral ambiguities of a sophisticated worldliness. It argues that Clift’s cosmopolitan perspective offered women a moral space that circumscribed local conditions. The article adds to an emerging body of knowledge on the gendered dimensions of cosmopolitanism and seeks to understand what kind of cosmopolitan world for women existed in 1960s
Australia.

The Art of Wool

An edited volume that examines the place of wool in the artistic imagination of Australia and considers visual relationships between art and fashion.Part of a wider curatorial project that brings together garments from the International Woolmark Prize archive with works from the Howard Hinton and Chandler Coventry Collections at New England Regional Art Museum. Editor's Introduction:Tanya Zoe Robinson'Introduction: stories of wool'Essay authors:Margaret Maynard, Honorary Research Consultant, Queensland University'Wool fashions: comfort, tactility, innovation'Adam Geczy, Senior Lecturer, Sydney College of the Arts'The art-fashion crossover'Christine France OAM'Wool in the artistic imagination of Australia'