Should schools have religion course?: Voice of Russia

A new course may be introduced in all Russian schools in 2013. This week, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov proposed making the Basics of Religious Culture and Secular Ethics compulsory for secondary education. His statement triggered heated discussions with many saying that the new course, the way it looks now, must not be included into the school curriculum even as an experiment.

Controversy around the need for religion classes in schools has been going on unabated ever since the then Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Alexi II announced that students must know the spiritual traditions of their country. As an example, he cited some European nations where the basics of spiritual and religious culture are compulsory even for university students. Opponents argue there is no room for religion in schools because the Constitution says that Russia as a secular state. President Dmitry Medvedev dotted the i?s and crossed the t?s when two years ago he signed a decree making the religion course compulsory in 19 Russian regions. The students are free to choose whether to attend classes in Orthodox culture or Islam or lectures on Judaism or Buddhism, or they may choose the history of all religions or secular ethics. An award-winning Russian teacher, Yevgeny Bunimovich, says that the fact that children are divided into groups questions the expediency of the course.

"This is a complicated and controversial matter. For instance, in France, religion is completely separated from school education. On the contrary, in Germany, the basics of religious culture are taught everywhere. In our multi-confessional and poly-confessional society, we need to search for our own teaching model. This should be done on a step-by-step basis. Any rush would do harm. When children are divided into ?a? and ?b? classes within one grade, it often provokes conflicts between them. Think what might happen if they are divided according to a religious and, in fact, according to an ethnic principle."

Teaching methods also pose concern. Religion expert Ivar Maksutov thinks that religion classes in public schools are utterly dangerous.

"The course has no common basis and the way this subject is taught is wrong. The division of children into groups according to their religious or world-view preferences is harmful and fraught with religious differentiation in schools. Making it compulsory now would be entirely wrong. The existing results are hardly positive."

The course needs to be changed so that it could unite children instead of dividing them. It should be more on the culturologic side and it also requires expert teachers with deep knowledge of the history and theory or various religions and cultures.

Source: http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/10/07/58348527.html

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