Churches Alive

SIR: Christopher Akehurst quickly modifies the title of his article, “The Continual Decline of the Suburban Church” (July-August 2020) noting “it is obviously not true” of the large number of Pentecostal churches nor of the Roman Catholic Church, though contending that even here “the prospects are far from rosy”. I can only speak of my local St John’s Catholic Church, at Campbelltown, where, pre-Covid, the five Sunday masses were crowded, recent Pacific and Asian arrivals contributing to the number. And the pupils of its primary school regularly attend and take part in a weekday Mass.

What he goes on to say of the large number of Australians with no church connection of course is true, but surely not the logic of his assertion that “if the Church is meaningless, it must follow that church buildings are meaningless too”. “The Church”? This is not true of the Roman Catholic Church nor in most places of the Anglican Church and indeed of the Uniting or Presbyterian, and English evidence especially indicates that church buildings have meaning for many non-churchgoers. Has research been done regarding Australian views of churches? Akehurst’s article raises many interesting and important questions.

The rest of the article is concerned with church buildings. Certainly the Uniting Church has closed many churches, first inevitably in places where the Methodist and Presbyterian (and any Congregational) congregations were combined. A few of the closed churches have been re-opened by the remnant Presbyterian Church or by independent evangelical groups. Second, others have been closed because of Uniting Church decline.

However, there has been a closing of churches for a century or more, for example, in parts of central Sydney as residents moved away—sometimes closed too soon, as Akehurst notes. Further out, from Hornsby to the Hawkesbury, new Anglican churches have been closed in the still small hamlets of Mount Colah, Mount Kuringai, Cowan and Brooklyn but new ones have been built in the now larger centres of Hornsby Heights, Asquith and Berowra.

But Akehurst strays out to rural districts. In many of them population has declined, and cars have made attendance at town churches much easier. Nonetheless, the Anglican Church far more than the Roman Catholic keeps many small country churches open, sometimes indeed in the open country and still providing a centre for what are still often seen as important occasions, especially christenings and weddings.

Tasmania has perhaps the largest number of often small but beautiful Anglican churches in hamlets with small populations (St Michael’s, Bothwell, is a large exception, with few residents nearby). The present bishop’s attempt to close a large number met with great opposition not only from frequent church-goers but all, Anglicans and others, who saw these churches as their own. Often communities have raised the large sums demanded for diocesan funds in order for these people to keep their churches and to keep them open. I could mention many that have survived, some with the support of families who originally gave land and buildings—I think of Christ Church in the paddocks at Illawarra, there thanks to the Dumaresq family, where Tom Roberts’s remains are buried, or St Mary’s, Hagley (there thanks in part to Sir Richard Dry) with its neighbours at Westbury and Carrick.

Architecture and history are appreciated by many regular church-goers, especially among the laity, but also by many others. A major exception is represented by the neo-puritan majority of our Sydney diocesan clergy, those who oppose church buildings of any kind, or who re-arrange church interiors with a contempt and ignorance of which I sometimes despair, though I place some hope in clergy who are truly Anglican evangelical. I wish we had a National Churches Trust such as England possesses as well as obedience to church law in the Anglican Church. We can only do our best to encourage appreciation of the varied aspects of one’s Church tradition, including of course its Gospel faith but also its art, music and architecture.

In the latter case, at eighty-four, before I depart this life I should love to find an accessible home for a collection of two or three hundred mainly church but also civic architectural books in my library, most as new, all just in return for a gift to some major medical or humanitarian charity. The contact details:

The Revd Dr John Bunyan
Colenso Corner
PO Box N109
Campbelltown North NSW 2560

NAPLAN, IQ and Creativity

SIR: I was pleased to see Professor Gannicott’s article (June 2020) further supporting Australia’s system of NAPLAN testing. His article followed my article, “Drop PISA, Keep NAPLAN” (May 2020), and was probably written before seeing mine. I would therefore like to add several points of clarification and extension to his article. These points refer mainly to the public criticisms of NAPLAN that Professor Gannicott mentioned in his second paragraph, plus a concluding comment on the failure of schools, and NAPLAN, to test for high creative ability.

The first important point concerns the criticism that NAPLAN over-emphasises “cognitive rather than non-cognitive skills”. Well, it should. IQ, or general mental ability as it is more often called nowadays, is by far the best predictor of educational achievement and occupational success at all levels of jobs, from the least to the most highly skilled, and is also the best predictor of lifetime health. Close inspection of the NAPLAN tests reveals that it is, above all, an IQ test. The NAPLAN Maths tests and the NAPLAN Reading and Writing tests are very similar in content to the US-devised SAT Math and SAT Verbal (now called Critical Reading and Writing) tests, which are clearly measures of quantitative IQ and verbal IQ respectively, and which are now used for admission to Melbourne University. A child can be good at one but not the other, a finding borne out by the approximate 0.7 correlation, or 49 per cent (rather than 100 per cent) relationship, between scores on the maths and verbal forms of SAT, and I am sure that this approximate 50 per cent relationship would hold between numeracy and literacy as measured by NAPLAN. And years in school do make a difference, but in an unfair manner known as “the Matthew effect”—an allusion to the Parable of the Talents in the Gospel of Matthew—whereby naturally more intelligent students benefit more from schooling than their less intelligent peers.

Attempting to improve your child’s NAPLAN results by paying for private coaching, another complaint mentioned in Professor Gannicott’s article, hardly seems to be worth the expense. US College Board research into coaching for the SAT reveals that coaching, on average, will increase SAT Math scores by only 3.3 per cent and SAT Verbal scores by only 1.7 per cent. And it is the already brighter students who benefit the most.

There is, however, an “elephant in the schoolroom”, namely the continued failure to test children for their creative ability. Intelligence or convergent thinking ability (where there is only one correct answer) has only about 10 per cent correlation with creative or divergent thinking ability (where alternative possible answers apply). Australia has slipped badly in innovation—as measured, for example, by patents lodged per capita each year—and there has never been a greater need to identify students by Year 9, the last year in which they undergo NAPLAN testing, who have high creative ability but not necessarily high IQs. These students should be allowed to leave school if they want to and encouraged to pursue a career in innovation (just as those low in both academic and creative ability should be allowed to leave school and pursue a suitable trade). There are many private sector and even government sector jobs to be opened up—in new product development, new service development, and the marketing and advertising of the same, and not to forget the arts—for which creativity will be at a premium.

As a researcher, I am developing a new and efficient test of creative ability that could easily be added to the NAPLAN tests when they resume next year.

John R. Rossiter
Wollongong, NSW