“SCHOOL SHOULD RESPECT ONE’S CHOICE OF WORLDVIEW”
State education is still dominated by materialism and utilitarian morality”
Article by Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, DECR vice-chairman, in the Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper

“SCHOOL SHOULD RESPECT ONE’S CHOICE OF WORLDVIEW”
State education is still dominated by materialism and utilitarian morality”
Article by Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, DECR vice-chairman, in the Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper
(Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 28 November 2002)

The article by Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, DECR vice-chairman, entitled “School should respect one’s choice of worldview” was published in Nezavisimaya Gazeta on November 28, 2002. The full text of the article, which was slightly abridged in the newspaper, reads as follows.

Political leaders and journalists have taken an unexpected interest in the discussion on the place which religious values should take in secular school. Many of them have joined in the discussion very emotionally while showing a rather low level of legal competence and respect for their opponents’ worldview. They have rejected even an optional teaching of religion envisaged by the legislation on religion. Deputy Chief of the Governmental Staff Alexey Volin as much as abased the feelings of millions of his fellow-citizens by comparing believe in God to “believe in communism as it was in 1985” and by describing the teaching of Orthodoxy in a multinational and multiconfessional state as a “danger”.

Yet no one has remembered for some reason that religion is traditional for state school in most of European countries. As is known, it has not led to any conflict or confrontation there. Post-totalitarian countries, such as Serbia, Romania and most of Central European and Baltic countries, as well as Georgia and Armenia, are confidently returning to the traditional system of religion-school relations. Over years, Orthodoxy has been taught in hundreds of state schools throughout Russia without arousing interconfessional confrontations.

I will remind you of some international regulations, which are not popular and openly ignored in Russia. The UN Convention against Discrimination in Education states that parents should be able to “ensure religious and moral education of the children in conformity with their own convictions.” Protocol No.1 to the European Human Rights Convention says: “In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions.”

However, our state school is still dominated by the non-alternative “scientific worldview” presupposing a skeptical attitude to religion, its values and visions. An Orthodox child has to choose between the authority of his family and that of school. At home, he is told that world and man are created by God, and the Bible describes true miracles, but school teaches him Darwinism and by the way calls the Holy Bible a collection of myths. At home, he is told that mastrubation is a sin, but school teaches it is “the fulfillment of physical needs.”

Materialistic ideology and utilitarian morality are still prevailing in school. Calling upon the state to stay religiously neutral, advocates of these visions completely forget that their own ideology is not neutral at all and presents only a part in the eternal philosophic discourse. In fact, upholding totalitarian materialism in school is not a difficult task today, as this vision has become habitual. They say, why should one rake around the established traditions and thus divide society! However, to follow this way of thinking means to call economic and political reforms a hasty action, which should have been stopped when many people came out against them.

What is the problem? Why some powerful people have attacked the idea of teaching the religious worldview in school, while being ignorant of legal notions and incapable to follow the logic of their own argumentation? Probably, they have got into the habit of deciding for people what is good for them and what is not, and in which way they should be educated. Vice-Speaker of the State Duma Irina Khakamada says: “The History of World Religions should have been introduced in school from the very outset. It would give a new quality to the formation of human mentality.” Are Russian citizens so primitive that they cannot decide on their own how to build their mentality – in the spirit of new or old attitudes, the Right or the Left, the White or the Red? Every Christian, Muslim, Catholic, Jew and practically any other true religionist regards the history of religion not only as an amount of knowledge, but also a science inseparably linked with the vision of holy things, of the place that God occupies in human life. The interpretation of religion as a merely social phenomenon sounds blasphemous for any religious person, be it a child, a parent or a teacher. That is why religious families have a right to demand that children should not be taught Mr. Volin’s or Mrs. Khakamada’s view at the expense of the state.

In my opinion, school should not reshape children’s worldview, but treat it with a certain respect, listen and adapt itself to it. Opposers of religious subjects act against their conscience when they accuse the Church of attempting to introduce the obligatory teaching of religion. No one has called anywhere to herd schoolchildren into the church fold under the lash. Even such a non-missionary and non-apologetical subject as the Basics of Orthodoxy is, which has repeatedly stood the test of life, is supposed to be introduced on a voluntary basis now.

Today, Russia is certainly able to ensure many-sided ideological and moral education which has respect for convictions both of the majority and minorities. We could follow the example of Serbia where students are allowed to choose between doctrines of six confessions and secular ethics. Additional school periods are reserved in the curriculum, students and their parents make their choice, and then everything is up to the student. As soon you make your choice, you are supposed to do your homework and receive appropriate grades. Smaller minorities exercise their right within the framework of national school. What prevents us from introducing this system in Russia? Is Russia worse than most of Western European countries where the doctrine of one or two traditional Churches is taught on the half-obligatory basis?

True, our state and our educational system are secular. However, it does not mean that it should be atheistic, as Patriarch Alexy II said. School should become a home for the Orthodox faithful, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Catholics, Protestants and non-believers. And for this purpose their worldviews are not to be reduced to “a common denominator” – it is impossible and dangerous in effect. Let every child hear from his teacher what would accord with his life choice and that of his parents.

ATTACHMENT

“WE PROVED TO BE SPIRITUALLY POOR
Orthodox culture deserves school’s attention”

Article by Russia’s Minister of Education Vladimir Filippov in the Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper
(Rossiyskaya Gazeta, No 221 (3089), 21 November 2002)

Do our children need to have knowledge of the bases of the Orthodox culture? In other words, do they need to study a reality existing for two thousand years?

The answer seems to be clear. It is also evident that the Orthodox culture deserves school’s attention no less than, for instance, the Greek one. A very simple example shows that for seventy years of the Soviet regime, when a vast layer of culture has been ignored, we have been deprived of our rightful share.

It is no use pressing children to visit the Russian Museum or the Tretyakov Gallery, where the two thirds of Russian artists’ paintings have Biblical subjects, unless the younger generation is grounded in the bases of the Orthodox culture. We are spiritually poor, because we know nothing about the formation of Orthodoxy and life of Christian ascetics. As to the formal aspect of the matter, the letter from the Ministry of Education, which is being so emotionally discussed in the press, was a response to the request of several regions (among them the Kaliningrad and Kemerovo regions) to give recommendations regarding the teaching of the Basics of the Orthodox Culture. It was a purely informational response.

The issue concerned only a curriculum that could be used in the teaching. The letter contained not a single word about how to teach this subject. Later, our press service made public the position of the Ministry on the issue. Here it is. First, the subject will not be included in the federal educational standard and consequently will not be obligatory for all schools in Russia. Secondly, the subject can be included in the regional standard or the curriculum of a particular school only as an optional subject or special course. Any school or region has a choice whether to introduce the Basics of the Orthodox Culture, physical training or some other subject or not. If a child (or his parents) does not want to attend the Basics of the Orthodox Culture class, he can choose something else… In my opinion, all human rights are thus observed.

There are some more aspects to be considered. First, one should not confuse secular education with atheistic one. Atheism is a religion too. When speaking of the secular nature of education, we mean the only thing: state-run educational institutions will not train personnel for any particular confession. Our purpose is to enable students to learn the Orthodox culture. This is the mission of school. However, religious cult and rites, on the contrary, should not be taught.

An appendix to the Education Law, adopted in last June ensures the secular approach, not a religious one, in the study of the Basics of the Orthodox Culture. According to the document, all textbooks involved in the federal and regional curricula will be distributed to schools only with the stamp “Permitted by the Ministry of Education.”