RUSSIA RELIGION NEWS


Orthodox clergy lament decline of interest in studying religion in schools

EVER FEWER SCHOOLCHILDREN SELECT FOUNDATIONS OF ORTHODOX CULTURE SUBJECT

Portal-credo.ru, 23 November 2015

 

Ever fewer schoolchildren are selecting the subject of Foundations of Orthodox Culture, declared RPTsMP Metropolitan of Ekaterinburg and Verkhotur Kirill. The metropolitan said that 20.6% of pupils in the Urals selected the subject when it first appeared in 2009. Now interest in the foundations of Orthodox culture has fallen to 14.56%. This is 6,249 fourth graders out of 42,909, Mel reported on 17 November.

 

"If someone says that this is the parents' wish, then this is the latest in our society," Metropolitan Kirill maintains. "This is the position of the head of the municipality and the administration of the district boards of education."

 

Ekaterinburg Archpriest Andrei Tkachev is more categorical and he thinks that the unpopularity of classes in Orthodox in schools is more frightening than the bombs of terrorists. "The issue of the mastery by our children of Russian Orthodox culture is a matter of life and death. A matter of the future of Russian civilization. Because naked patriotism, that has lost higher spiritual meanings, too easily gives birth to nazism. . . . Ignorance of matters of one's own spiritual identity destroys a society worse than terrorists' bombs. Therefore I will now speak about the terror that we are doing to ourselves and parents to their own children. When we give them knowledge but not education and we ask them about facts and not about meanings," Tkachev concludes.

 

The teaching community of the district does not see problems in the reduction of indicators for classes in Foundations of Orthodox Culture, and it thinks that the situation with the subject is stable. "We will continue to work jointly with the church," teacher Evgeniia Umnikova says. (tr. by PDS, posted 25 November 2015)


Russia Religion News Current News Items

Editorial disclaimer: RRN does not intend to certify the accuracy of information presented in articles. RRN simply intends to certify the accuracy of the English translation of the contents of the articles as they appeared in news media of countries of the former USSR.

If material is quoted, please give credit to the publication from which it came. It is not necessary to credit this Web page. If material is transmitted electronically, please include reference to the URL, http://www.stetson.edu/~psteeves/relnews/.