RUSSIA LOOKS TO ITS RELIGIOUS CULTURE
Viktor Malukhin

MercatorNet
Wednesday, 30 September 2009

The Orthodox Church has won its battle to make religious education
compulsory in schools, but secularists have won concessions too.

Church of the Resurrection, St PetersburgPatriarch Kirill’s public
triumph in Ukraine in July was preceded with another achievement
no less important for the Russian Orthodox Church. This took place
in the much more intimate atmosphere of the presidential residence
in Barvikha, in the Moscow Oblast. There Dmitry Medvedev met with
the leaders of Russia’s traditional religions, and responded to two
appeals from them.

He agreed that the history and culture of the country’s main religions
should be included in the core school curriculum. He also agreed
that the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation should have military
priests.

Patriarch Kirill was the first to sign both documents. The Muslim
and Jewish religious communities supported the Orthodox position,
despite previous objections from some muftis and rabbis.

What will this decision mean in practice for schools? Twice a week from
the spring of next year, pupils in the fourth and fifth classes will
study one of three new subjects. They and their parents will be able
to choose between the religious culture of one religion (Orthodox,
Islam, Judaism or Buddhism), the history and cultural background of
the world’s great religions, or the foundations of secular ethics. It
will be compulsory for pupils to choose one of these three modules.

To start with, it will be introduced in 18 regions in six of the seven
federal regions of Russia. The three-year experiment will be introduced
in 12,000 Russian schools, 20,000 classes, 256,000 children and 44,000
teachers, according to the Ministry for Education and Science. From
2012, the new modules will be introduced to all Russian schools.

These three modules, "Foundations of religious culture", "Foundations
of history and culture of world rel oundations of secular ethics",-
will be taught by teachers who have taken a special training course,
though most of them will probably have had a secular education. The
rector of Moscow’s State University V.A. Sadovnichy has already
expressed a desire to put the resources of the country’s leading
university behind the re-training of these specialists. But it is clear
that at first the main problem will be a serious lack of qualified
teaching staff.

The contents of the textbooks for these modules is also likely to
prompt public debate. Consequently, the Church has already declared
its readiness to work with the Ministry of Education and Science,
the Russian Academy of Education, and a number of other institutes
in order to inspect the new textbooks and study materials. This has
already been announced by the head of the Synodal Department for
Religious Education, Bishop Zaraisky Merkury.

The patriarchate has entrusted the writing of the new textbook on
the foundations of Orthodox culture to the well-known Deacon Andrei
Kuraev, professor of Moscow State University and the Moscow Spiritual
Academy. "We must hope that these various textbooks will be written in
such a way that whatever religion the children belong to, if they are
going to fight during the school break, they’ll use the books, rather
than the words contained in them as weapons!" said the protodeacon.

"There should be no place for religious propaganda in these lessons,
no appeals to perform particular religious rites or to accept
particular dogmas. The textbooks should not contain criticism of other
religions, and there should not be a single line which could be used
as an argument in the debate of the superiority of one religion over
another. The subject should be treated secularly. It should be financed
by a secular organisation, and ‘indoctrination’ into any faith should
be prohibited," stressed the author of the future Orthodox textbook.

A long campaign

It took two decades to win state support for the teaching of religious
culture. However, of children and their parents, and to the good
will of local authorities and school heads, in many parts of Russia,
classes in Orthodox or Muslim culture have in fact already become
part of the curriculum – but only as optional subjects, or as part
of the regional component of the curriculum.

For example, in the bishopric of Smolensk, which was headed by Bishop
Kirill before he was elected Patriarch, they have already set up
a three-tier system of spiritual and moral education for children
and young people, embracing Orthodox kindergartens, lyceums and the
appropriate faculties and departments in high schools.

In various other bishoprics it was agreed that the Church would work
with local education authorities. Teachers were given training on
the foundations of Orthodox culture. In one way or another, over
half a million pupils are already studying the subject across the
country. However, it was the abolition of the regional educational
component two years ago that spurred the religious activists into
action.

An open letter addressed by Patriarch Kirill to the minister for
education and science A.A. Fursenko just over a month before the
meeting at Barvikha testified to their disquiet. The Patriarch
expressed his concern that despite the agreements previously arrived
at, "the educational section on religious and moral culture was
missing from the main (compulsory) section of the curriculum of the
new federal state education standard for the education of the young
proposed for publication on the official site of the Ministry for
Education and Science of the Russian Federation. It had been proposed
that this would come up with a number of subjects concerning a common
system of moral values, to be chosen by pupils or their parents."

The Patriarch asked the ministry to reintroduce the subject of
"spiritual and moral culture" to schools. He also asked them to
include official representatives of the Church "in a working party
tasked with developing federal state educational standards. Also to
include them in all bo of these standards, as also with the development
of the curriculum on spiritual and moral culture".

The tone of barely restrained irritation in this document
is understandable. For the Ministry of Education and Science had
blatantly broken all previous agreements, including those reached at
high-level meetings in the presence of the head of the presidential
administration S.E. Naryshkin and his first deputy V.Yu. Surkov.

Besides, the Russian Orthodox Church (chiefly through the metropolitan,
and subsequently through Patriarch Kirill), has been trying for years
to persuade its opponents that teaching the foundations of religious
culture is only intended to be a voluntary subject. There will be
alternatives, which will take into account the regional predominance
of different religions.

The Patriarch was at pains to stress that his overriding concern was
that the historical and cultural aspect of the new subject should
be well established. For without a good grasp of the foundations of
the religion that defines the state, it is impossible to understand
the country’s historical roots, or to appreciate the riches of its
national culture.

There was much discussion of the fact that although Russia’s
constitution stipulates the separation of Church and state, in Russian
history the Church is none the less closely linked with the lives of
the people, as well as being a significant and influential aspect of
civil society.

Finally, the Church issued a polite but firm reminder that freedom
of conscience, seen solely as an unlimited opportunity to inculcate
atheist thought, is a hangover from the worst days of the state’s
war against religion

Responding to critics who accuse the Church of trying to clericalise
secular society, the Patriarch said: "We are worried about the moral
climate in schools which forms the personality of the person, and
his or her understanding of good and evil. This is what concerns us,
not lobbying for a particular subject of the curriculum, as people
often try to make out".

However, the lack nal education system does raise issues. For
example, in Moscow today there are plenty of ethnic schools which
receive municipal funding, and sometimes also from the state. There
are several dozen Azerbaijani, Armenian, Georgian, Jewish, Korean,
Lithuanian, Moldovan, Ukrainian, Tatar and many other schools, upper
secondary schools and education centres. But strange though it may
seem, there is not one which specialises in Russian culture (unless you
count private schools like the Radonezh gymnasium). In fact, they have
not been allowed to teach a course on Orthodox culture in mainstream
Moscow schools. It would seem obvious that such anomalies in our
approach to educating young people could lead to serious inter-ethnic
problems for those living in a multi-ethnic capital such as ours.

The Kremlin heard the voice of the Patriarch. So too did critics
of the Moscow Patriarchate, who mocked the "Barvikha symphony" of
the Church and State, the "Orthodoxisation of the country" and the
"missionary revenge of the church". For they realise the threat which
Patriarch Kirill’s new policy, which is gaining increasing popular
support, poses to their ideas.

This policy lies in turning nominal Christians, people who are Orthodox
only in name, into active members of the Church. The Patriarch has set
himself the task of bringing the growing generation of Russians into
the church and taking care of them, a generation whose spiritual,
moral and physical health is now being sorely tested by the false
ideals that are forced on it – vulgar consumerism, social egoism, and
attainment of personal success at any price. For as the old Russian
saying goes, "he who does not know the law does not know sin either".

I hear that at a parish Sunday school where the well-known Moscow
priest Maxim Kozlov teaches pupils sing this merry ditty after lessons:
"Father Maxim is going to teach us ‘goats’ (ed play on name Kozlov)
everything!"

I like the pun, the self-deprecating humour. It makes me feel good
about the future.

Viktor Malukhin works for ment of the Moscow Patriarchate. This
article has been republished from openDemocracy.net under a Creative
Commons licence.

Copyright © Viktor Malukhin. Published by MercatorNet.com. You may
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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress