Jesus in Schools

The Education (Religious Instruction) Act 1950

Authors

  • Amanda Burritt University of Divinity

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/jasr.22394

Keywords:

religious, education, Jesus, Protestant, state schools

Abstract

The 1872 Education Act stated that education in the state of Victoria would be ‘free, compulsory and secular’. In the years following World War II there was a broadly endorsed imperative to maintain British cultural identity as an essential component of the national character of Australia as a Commonwealth nation. Associated Protestant moral values were believed to be a crucial underpinning of good citizenship and democracy. In 1946 the Council for Christian Education in Schools (CCES) published an Agreed Syllabus for religious instruction in government state schools. In 1950 compulsory religious instruction was introduced into these schools. The representation in associated teaching material reflected a particular understanding of Jesus. A close contextualised reading of CCES curriculum documents from the 1950s reveals distinctive ways in which a ‘British’ Jesus was represented in Victorian classrooms and the extent to which this representation aligned with the interests of the state.

Author Biography

  • Amanda Burritt, University of Divinity

    Amanda Burritt is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne and an Honorary Research Associate at the University of Divinity. Her research interests include cultural, intellectual and religious history, as well as visual culture and object-based pedagogies. Burritt recently published Visualising Britain’s Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century (2020) in the Palgrave Macmillan Britain and the World series.

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Published

2022-05-10

Issue

Vol. 35 No. 1 (2022): Special Issue: Dialogues of Secular and Sacred: Christianity in Mid-Twentieth-Century Australian Culture

Section

Articles

License

Equinox Publishing Ltd.

How to Cite

Burritt, A. (2022). Jesus in Schools: The Education (Religious Instruction) Act 1950. Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, 35(1), 94–111. https://doi.org/10.1558/jasr.22394

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