Conference on Cooperation Between State and Religious Organizations in Education

CONFERENCE ON COOPERATION BETWEEN STATE AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS IN EDUCATION

A conference on Cooperation Between State and Religious Organization in Education was held on October 10-11, 2002, in Moscow and Sergiyev Posad. It was organized by the Presidential Envoys for the Central, Transvolga and South Federal Regions, the Ministry of Education, the State Duma Committee for Public and Religious Organizations and the Interreligious Council in Russia.

The meeting was opened by G. Poltavchenko, Presidential Envoy for the Central Federal Region. “It is impossible to build a law-governed state, using only economic levers and power structures”, he said, adding, “It is necessary to develop civil society institutes of which religious organizations are integral part”. He also noted that a considerable part of the population supported the idea to include Basic Orthodox Culture in the list of school disciplines meeting the standards of the Russian Federation Ministry of Education.

S. Kiriyenko, Presidential Envoy for the Transvolga Federal Region, described education as an area of joint responsibility and actions for the Russian state and religious organizations. He emphasized that the state’s concern for education should not be confined to the material support of the educational process. Education is the formation of the principles of life, he said, noting that at present the curricula are based latently on the values of atheistic worldview.

The participants received a message of greetings from V. Kazantsev, Presidential Envoy for the Southern Federal Region.

Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad read out a message of greetings from His Holiness Patriarch Alexy of Moscow and All Russia. In his speech, he stated that the secular nature of a state did not mean the domination of an atheistic ideology. “The secular school is a school free from clerical power, rather than a school silent about the existence of religious convictions”, he said. He also proposed to introduce basic Orthodox, Islamic, Buddhist or Judaic religious cultures to the curriculum of secondary schools in areas with predominant population of a particular religion as a regional component of education. The right combination of general educational standards with the regional religious component of education will help cultivate tolerance among schoolchildren. “An Orthodox child in Tatarstan will be interests to know what is the mosques standing next to his place and who are the Moslems with which he lives”, Metropolitan Kirill believes.

Among the speakers were also Metropolitan Sergiy of Solnechnogorsk in his capacity of cochairman of the Coordination Committee of the Education Ministry and the Moscow Patriarchate, representatives of traditional religious organizations, statesmen, scholars and teachers. Metropolitan Sergiy stated that our ancestors and spiritual teachers had the right to stay in the people’s memory, and the generations to come could not be deprived of the right to preserve their national identity and to develop their spirituality.

The Participants discussed education for tolerance and respect for other nations and faiths, as well as measures for preventing religious extremism and interreligious conflicts.

The opinion was expressed that religious education can be granted only if children and their parents express their will to get it freely; it does not contradict the secular nature of the Russian education system. The need for the state to support religious education and improve the legislative basis for partnership between the state and religious organizations in education and formation was noted. Among important tasks in cooperation between the state and religious organization is to work together to solve the problems of children’s homelessness, spread of drugs, propaganda of violence and cruelty and the sexual abuse of children.

After the plenary session, the conference continued its work in sections on “State policy in religious education”, “State policy in religious education in the Russian Federation regions”, “Spiritual and moral formation and education”, and “Religious secular education: theology in higher education”.

The conference spent its second day in Sergiyev Posad. At the closing session, a final document was adopted, summarizing the experience of cooperation in education between religious organizations and federal and regional bodies and formulating recommendations for developing cooperation in this field.

On the same day, the members of the conference’s presidium met with the faculty and students of the Moscow Theological Seminary and Academy.