Christianity had a significant impact on education and public morality in Australia whin the years of 1788-1900. In relation to public morality, I discuss the significance that the Christian church had on Australian society in the 1800's by the establishing of the Temperance movement as well as several other actions involving education.The temperance movement was dedicated to promoting moderation and, more often, complete abstinence in the use of intoxicating liquor. Although an abstinence pledge had been introduced by churches as early as 1800, the earliest temperance organizations seem to have been those founded at Saratoga, New York, in 1808 and in Massachusetts in 1813. The movem ...view middle of the document...
Catholics supported the Governor's proposal, which further angered the Protestants. The successive alliance between the Anglicans and the Protestant denominations favourably brought about an anti-Catholic move to condemn concessions to a religious minority at the expense of national school systems based on the religious teachings of the Bible.It is not widely known that the Christian Church first established not by the government but education in Australia. The history of Australia's Christian day school movement, and ultimate influence on Australian society is traced within my essay, from its colonial beginnings to the year 1880 when government education officially began. My essay reveals that the Bible based church related school of early colonial times was remarkably successful in meeting the academic and spiritual/moral needs of the younger generation of that day. It also shows that when certain principles undergirding this Christian school movement were disregarded, Australian education began to lose its dynamic.William Penn and Puritan John Drury along with numerous others, who followed them, placed heavy emphasis upon the need for religious and moral instruction of the colonies young. In Australia, one sees a similar outreach expressed in the missionary appointment by the evangelical arm of the Church of England of men such as Richard Johnson and Samuel Marsden. Various British religious societies and leading reformers such as ShaResbury and Wilberforce extended continuing encouragement, both financial and moral, to the Australian church school movement.The Rev. Richard Johnson, first Chaplain to the Australian colony, was deeply concerned about the moral state of the convict population to whom he was to minister. Only three years after the colony's settlement, he began to examine the possibilities of providing some form of Christian education. Johnson wrote to a friend in England asking him to recruit someone prepared to establish schools on Sunday for illiterate convicts in New South Wales "with the intention of bringing some of those unhappy wretches to a better way of thinking".Governor King was also deeply concerned about the matter and encouraged the establishing of schools. He was largely responsible for setting up and even financing from his own private funds orphanages for the illegitimate offspring of convicts. Attached to these institutions were schools in which the inmates were taught tailoring, shoemaking and gardening up to the age of fifteen years.Originally the Church of England, claiming to be the established church, assumed responsibility for the education of the new colonists. The Presbyterian and Roman Catholic Churches who had a large number of followers among the colonists challenged this.Australian education was characterised by a number of decades of denominational disquiet within the early years of the 1800's. By this time a number of denominations were involved in day school education. The colonial government...
