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Keywords: Curiosity

  • RELIGION

    National Curriculum a step forward

    • Chris Middleton
    • 16 October 2014
    5 Comments

    Federal Education Minister Christopher Pyne has supported a national curriculum, while some observers have cautioned that it is not the panacea for improving educational standards that many may hope for. The Federal Review report released in the past week addresses many of the concerns, and on the whole their recommendations seem appropriate and constructive.  

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A pope of blurred boundaries

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 09 October 2014
    41 Comments

    Pope Francis is a leader out of his time. In Western society the times are sombre and fearful, and governance emphasises control, security and strong leadership. There is a desire for clear boundaries marking who is in and who is out. The Synod on the Family will  show how far Pope Francis' open and inclusive style can be reflected in the Church's instruments of control.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The challenge of a five-year Royal Commission

    • Frank Brennan
    • 09 September 2014
    17 Comments

    All church members, and not just the victims who continue to suffer, need light, transparency and accountability if the opaque injustices of the past are to be rectified. Justice Peter McClellan and his fellow commissioners have to do more to bring the states and territories to the table and to get real buy-in by all governments. 

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Elegy for the 298 of MH17

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 21 July 2014
    17 Comments

    The deepest questions raised by the deaths of those on the plane shot down over the Ukraine are the unavoidable questions that face us all: questions about the patent precariousness and vulnerability of our lives, about what matters to us when our grasp on the future is so tenuous, about the mysterious conjunction of love, loss, pain and gift, and about the capacity of the human heart for evil and the terrible consequences that follow.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The weight and wonder of a brother's last words

    • Brian Doyle
    • 18 June 2014
    12 Comments

    We give great weight to last words. Most of the time I'd guess that those words are about love. I'd guess that some of those final words are shrieks or gasps or utterances of astonishment. The very last thing my brother said before he died was 'The answer is in the questioning.' I have thought about those words for two years now. It turns out you can ponder them from every conceivable angle and never get to the bottom of what they mean.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The boy who never stops

    • Clare Locke
    • 10 June 2014
    4 Comments

    I'm sitting on sturdy chair, stretch cotton nightie, baby to my breast in this pale light, my newest success. Memory has framed this view, of life dawning, love nestled quietly in a sure footed chair. Years on, that honeyed perfection, the bliss of triumphant togetherness, soothes the shock of his rage, his energy.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Don't let plane panic paint all men as paedophiles

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 02 May 2014
    15 Comments

    For feminists who have fought for generations against sexism, the argument that men should be excised from children's orbit lest they commit the same atrocities of which a small percentage of other men are guilty is chilling. It rubber-stamps the notion that people's character and behavioural choices are determined by their gender, and presupposes that individuals can be judged on the basis of their group's collective history.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The empathy revolution

    • Barry Gittins and Jen Vuk
    • 14 February 2014
    3 Comments

    While realpolitik can drive us beyond a healthy scepticism to cynicism and indifference, British cultural thinker Roman Krzaric contends that when we look beyond the real — through imagination, creativity, vulnerability and networking — we can bring about the ideal of 'empathy on a mass scale to create social change' and even go about 'extending our empathy skills to embrace the natural world'. Without dreamers like Krzaric, we're stuffed.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Indonesia gives a Gonski

    • Pat Walsh
    • 24 July 2013
    3 Comments

    Like Australia's Gonski reforms, Indonesia's initiatives are designed to give its economy a competitive edge by upgrading its human resources. But the changes also have the potential to radically transform Indonesia in other ways. Future generations who have been encouraged to think for themselves, to question and to criticise will be very different citizens to their forbears.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Boys using violence to impress girls

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 30 May 2013

    Some lessons need to be learned more than once. A young boy punches an older peer in defence of the honour of a girl he admires. The girl is so impressed that she invites the boy on a date. Is violence, then, an approved medium for the defence of romantic ideals? The boy tests this premise twice more, with less gratifying results. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Abbott's animal charms

    • Barry Gittins and Jen Vuk
    • 03 May 2013
    5 Comments

    Casting a Victorious PM Abbott as a puppet of Pell and Howard, or a fiddler with women's rights, seems risible; Abbott is bound by social restraints after all. Nonetheless, there is something ominous in David Marr's droll observation: 'His values have never stood in his way.'

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The Palestinian who would be Jewish

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 11 April 2013
    1 Comment

    A Rabbi informs Joseph that although he has been circumcised and celebrated his Bah Mitzvah, the revelations about his biological origins mean he must undergo 'cleansing' rituals to be accepted as a Jew. Religious institutions err when they elevate legalism over human need. In this instance the institution is found wanting.

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