RUSSIA
Saint-Petersburg State University
- Prof. Dr. Vladimir Fedorov
- Fedor Kosyrev
The main issues of the reorganization of religious education in the Russian state school system after the end of Soviet era are still being debated. The most promising approach seems to be the idea of enculturating RE in state schools, i.e. teaching religion with a focus on its cultural aspects. Another trend of the last years is teaching religion through the establishment of non-state confessional schools. This is done mostly in Moscow. In 2002 the Ministry of Education attempted to include "Christian Orthodox Culture" into curricula for general education schools. It has already become a regular school subject in several cities and provinces of Russia: Voronezh, Kursk, Smolensk and others. However, loud protests from a segment of Russian society did not allow the ministry to realise its plans in most parts of Russia.
The government and Orthodox church initiatives encouraged research work in the field of RE. Among recent academic achievements are a schoolbook "The Basics of Christian Orthodox Culture" by A. Borodina , "The Legal Basics of the Concepts of Secular State and Secular Education" by I. Ponkin , "Religious Culture in the Educational Content" by L. Harisova) and others. Developing and introducing a "World Religions" syllabus is one of the most pressing tasks, and a number of educational institutions have already begun to work in this direction.
Nevertheless the lack of an elaborated contemporary educational theory and methodology dealing with religion in a secular environment and a strong political attachment to educational issues (mostly of an exclusivist kind) remain the greatest obstacles for developing effective teaching practices for RE in Russia. There is still a wide range of unresolved problems regarding principles of organisation and management of RE in schools. For instance, many pedagogues still do not recognise the difference between religious education and Christian nurture. There is an annual conference on religious education in Moscow, but the direction of the discussions there is solely confessional. There are many Russian articles especially on the new project "Basics of Orthodox culture", but the only alternative to the mainstream discussion is the research by Fedor Kosyrev "Religious Education in Public Schools: Theory and international experience from a Russian perspective".
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