Municipalities around Finland have called for sweeping reforms to the way schools teach religion.
Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE reported that currently the system divides students into study groups determined by faith; something that local officials claim is not merely impractical but is also a contradiction to the fundamental ideals of religious tolerance. Legislation stipulates that any municipality which contains at least three students of a particular denomination must provide religious instruction in that faith. This concept has been slammed by the multi-cultural city of Helsinki as being over ambitious. In smaller cities such as Ylojarvi, where the population is just 30,000, the strain on teaching resources is just as dramatic, as schools struggle to find teachers to lead classes for a handful of pupils.
The national religion of Finland is Evangelical Lutheranism but thousands of students across the land in comprehensive schools are taught differing religions. The challenge is ongoing, as immigration enhances cultural diversity leaving many municipalities struggling to provide adequate religious education for an expanding learner group.
Veli-Matti Kanerva, Director for Educational Services Development in Tampere advocates a move away from parallel religious study to learning general ethics. “It’s difficult to find qualified teachers for minority religions in Finland. The teachers we do finds lack a pedagogical background,” claimed Kanerva.
Kanerva suggests that multiculturalism can only be supported by general religious studies and that the incumbent system promotes segregation and intolerance. “How can we learn tolerance when groups are segregated? I’m against this practice because it’s a paradox,” he stated.
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wardropper – It’s easier to teach and test an atomist curriculum than a holistic curriculum. Easier to componentise knowledge and measure its acquisition.
But seriously, Plato’s idea was that mathematics, religion, art, music and philosophy were indispensible parts of a unity, corresponding to the fact that the individual organs in a man’s body are indispensible parts of no more than one whole man.
School today is taught as if a man’s limbs needed a separate classroom, his heart another and his brain yet another.
Going backwards seems to be a necessary stage in the acquirement of individual enlightenment – I hope we get through it soon…
For maximum efficacy, brainwashing must start when the subject is young…
OF COURSE religion has a place in the schools of any republic!
It’s amazing to me that people these days still create the dichotomy between missionizing inculcation and elimination as the only options in religious education. Of course schools should address religion; concern for ultimate meaning is the basis of societies the world over! The solution is in religious studies, ie comparative religion, understanding the basic practices, principles, and worldview of others provides a deep grounding opportunity for one’s own worldview and communal religion. That’s not “multiculturalism”, it’s just good sense.
The laicisme of France only seeks to create Rouseauian robots, cogs for the state. Better to educate children as free citizens, grounded in understanding!
Religion has no place in the school of republic. In France religion is not taught in school.
If you already believe something, why waste valuable time learning something different. Maths teaching could be similarly rationalised by asking children whether they believe in the Platonic reality of numbers – and then just teaching them either pure or applied maths in accordance with their belief system.
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Why don’t they just not teach religion? I think that’s what they do in Japan and China.