I understand your point FD, but I believe we sometimes need to limit some rights for the good of society.
Education, and the raising of children is an area I take tremendously seriously, and I believe that all kids deserve the right to recieve an unbiased and balanced education.

In earlier times religious schools were less extreme, but now we are seeing a shift toward very fundamentalist beliefs being taught, this completely insulates those subjected to it from experiencing societal norms, and creates growing insularity, of an Us against Them nature.

Ultimately this could lead to severe social disharmony and conflict.

I think people have plenty of time outside of school hours to teach their kids values specific to their religious beliefs, but they also need to learn societies values, and secularising education would certainly help with that.

Limiting some freedoms for the greater good is a fair trade.
No one at school would be telling them their parents are wrong, their religion is wrong, they would just be receiving a normal balanced education, with any religious bias removed, how can that be bad?

I believe that all kids deserve the right to recieve an unbiased and balanced education.

There is no such thing as an unbiased and balanced education. All education is a form of indoctrination. Freedom of religion is far more important than a right to what you see as an unbiased education.

In earlier times religious schools were less extreme, but now we are seeing a shift toward very fundamentalist beliefs being taught

No we aren't. We are seeing the opposite. What we are seeing is an increase in is scaremongering.

Ultimately this could lead to severe social disharmony and conflict.

Imposing conformity is not the solution to disharmony. Tolerance is. Taking away people's right to be different is the opposite of tolerance. It will not stop with imposing uniform education. Once you validate intolerance, people become more intolerant, not less. They start fretting over all the other little differences and demanding the government intervene and remove them also. Your solution would not lead to social harmony. It would lead to the opposite. People will not be harmonious when you try to take their children away from them because they practice their fundamental right to freedom of religion. They will try to kill you.

but they also need to learn societies values

Our society values freedom above all else. You do not teach that value by taking freedom away. You need to be re-educated in our society's values.  

Limiting some freedoms for the greater good is a fair trade.

No it isn't. It is the reason why human rights are considered fundamental and inalienable, because there is always someone trying to take them away 'for the greater good'. It is a BS excuse to impose your views on others.

No one at school would be telling them their parents are wrong

You cannot impose secular views regarding religion without telling them that theirs is not the one true religion. You must treat them all equally.

Well thought out and well supported argument ?

Well I did give some examples earler. Science for example teaches demonstrably wrong theories as fact, merely because they are 'dominant' in the broader community.

Well now you are being really silly, the shift has been to a proliferation of what would be considered more extreme, fundamentalist, or fringe schools proliferating since Howard changed the funding arrangements, as I posted earlier.

That is hardly a trend. Now Rudd may reduce private school funding. No need to ban them.

I did not make up the figure of a new faith school opening every six weeks in the early 2000's.

Where did you get it from?

We are a country built on egalitarianism

How is it egalitarian to say your approach to child raising is better than everyone else's, so the government must take people's children away so they can be indoctrinated into your school of thought? That is the opposite of egalitarian. It is a superiority complex run wild. You look down on religious people. You make no attempt to hide your contempt for them. You think they can't be trusted to make choices for their own children. It is one of the most unaustralian concepts I have come across.

So you think tolerance will make evryone stop insularising themselves?

Sure. That has been the trend for a few centuries now. No reason why it should suddenly stop. You seem to be living in a historical vacuum, where nothing existed prior to 1990. And besides, freedom is more important than the 'societal issue' you project onto insularity.

Anyway, I am sick of this, you really are being a total bluey on this subject, try coming down off your high horse for a minute and take a look at the real world.

I am looking at the real world. You aren't. What starts as limited dismantling of human rights ends with gas chambers. We have seen the consequences of what you propose many times and we have rejected it. On the other hand the problems you complain about are not problems at all. It is pure scare mongering that has never caused anything like the problems that come with the erosion of human rights.

Putting 'society' before human rights and personal freedom is just stupid. It always ends badly. Societies are made up of individuals. It is not society you are putting first, but yourself, by pretending that 'my way or the highway' is some kind of improvement to freedom of choice. It is arrogant to think that imposing your choices on others will somehow improve things, merely by reducing people's freedom to be different.

Personal freedom has got us to where we are today, and only a moron would think going back to the dark ages is an improvement.

Not true. It cannot be disproven by science and therefore it is a theory.

That's the opposite of what science is. Science is limited to the falisifiable. In this case what they are teaching has been falsified, or disproven.

It is never taught as fact. I've never heard a lecturer say that "it is a fact that when you enter a black hole you will be transported to and exit via a white hole to another part of the universe."

Nop, but you probably have been taught that F=ma.

You, yourself said that scientists always avoid using the term "fact".

I'm not talking about scientists. I'm talking about high school science teachers. Also, in maths II, though I think they call it something else these days. When your history teacher talks about the holocaust, it is presented as fact, even though they don't use the term fact. In science, students are indoctrinated into seeing the world a certain way, even though that 'way' is wrong. If they do physics through to grade 12, they are eventually mislead into thinking the correct way is the same view of the world with slightly different equations.

Re: holocaust. You are comparing history with science.

I was just pointing out that you don't have to call something a fact to present it as a fact. Even if they were told it is a theory, or law, that is still a form of indoctrination, because they are being taught to see the world in a way that is wrong.

There's nothing 'possible' about it. Newtonian mechanics has been disproven. All science is 'probably wrong', but we teach it because it is the best explanation available and the best one that hasn't been disproven. That is not the case with NM.

Newtonian mechanics is definitely wrong.