Gee, wonder why I grew up to be an ardent atheist? Yet it seems this base form of Christian indoctrination that I was subjected to is still going on in our schools. In a world in which Islam is sometimes perceived as a dirty word and Israel and Palestine are still at it, it is almost laughable that Australian primary school kids are still being taught about creationism and the immaculate conception. Last week it was revealed hundreds of primary school principals in Victoria have stopped offering weekly religious education, despite an Education Department guideline to run classes where a teacher was available. State legislation allows government school teachers to teach general religious education as part of the curriculum - that is, the main forms of religious thought and expression characteristic of Australian and other societies. However, it is rarely taught in government schools. Instead, more than 120,000 Victorian schoolchildren receive instruction solely in Christianity. One of the many problems with this is who's doing the teaching. About 80 per cent of religious education is administered by volunteers of the Christian group, Access Ministries. Fairness in Religions in School, a parent-driven grassroots campaign committed to the belief that churches have no right to set curriculum policy, believes these volunteers see themselves as modern-day missionaries with an assignment to convert children. The group says special religious instruction is contrary to the principles of state education. Instead, it supports education about religion that is ''consistent with Australia's multicultural character'' and believes that ''families should be trusted to attend to the religious formation of their children''.

Couldn't have said it better. What I was taught at school was rubbish. I was asked to suspend rational thought for a faith I not only couldn't comprehend, but grew to fear. The messages of Christianity were delivered through its archaic scare-tactic propaganda, omitting the underlying goodness, the root tenets I believe are the basis of all religion. For a sane understanding of Christianity, I generally defer to Father Bob Maguire, a man I thoroughly respect and who, the Catholic church seems to have missed, is the best PR it's had in a long, long while. The man is reasonable - a realist. Yes, he has faith, but it is measured and personal and, the way he tells it, almost understandable. Yet he, too, believes the religious education system is lacking. ''At school, there ought to be a general religious curriculum to introduce children to the ideas and motivations and rituals - in a word, the ethos - of all the religions,'' he says, to a loud ''hear bloody hear!'' in my house. My thoughts on the subject of religious education in schools? Bring it on! Only, let's make it lessons in the theologies of all religions, evenly. And, more importantly, lessons on how such beliefs have affected history and still do - positively and negatively.

Let's not talk to school kids about the bowels of hell, Adam, Eve and the snake, water to wine, burning bushes and the parting of a sea as fact. If you want your child to receive such a single-focus religious education, well, that's the role of the family, and it's what religious institutions are for. As for the rest of Australia's children, let them hear all the stories and fathom their messages - and allow them to make up their own minds about whether they have faith or not. This is, after all, the Australian way. In a summary of the 2011 census, the Bureau of Statistics notes the nation's history of supporting religious pluralism, ''including the right to practise no religion'', and says: ''By Federation, this diversity was enshrined in the Australian constitution, which says that the Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion''. While we may have been more active, diverse and tolerant in the past, today many Australians are opting out all together, with the number claiming no religion increasing from one in 250 people to one in five in the past 100 years.

Looking at these figures, it appears special religious instruction methodologies in this country have only led most of us to actively choose hell. Age columnist Wendy Squires is a journalist, editor and author. Twitter: @Wendy_Squires