I hear some instances like [this](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.dw.com/en/court-muslim-boy-must-attend-nrw-schools-catholic-service/a-41261543) in certain countries.

41 comments

  2. Yes and it’s slightly complicated. If the child is a member of the Lutheran or Orthodox churches they can only take part in Lutheran or Orthodox RE classes respectively. If the child isn’t it’s possible to get classes in their own religion (I think that it requires a certain number of students), for example in Helsinki they also offer classes in Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism and Hare Krishna. They and students who aren’t members of any religion can also choose an ethics class (called “view of life knowledge”). I did that at school and found it valuable as we talked about things like what makes a good life or a good society (though mostly it was a mess of bad teachers and disrespect from the school mixed with a little Satanic panic as it was the 90s). There’s a movement to combine the subjects but I think that there are good reasons to keep the system as well though I’d like for all students to have the choice.

  3. We have a religion and ethics class which everyone has, where we learn about all religions.

  4. No, except in some private school and in that case it’s usually just not mandatory.

    Otherwise religions are only talked about in history class, since it’s a big part of European history. But it’s not studied from a theological point of view, of course, more how they appeared, spread, and their influence on events.

  5. In public schools you can eigther take religion that depends a lot on the teacher but is more the history of diferent religions or the other atheist option (i cant say what it was becouse i hadnt take it)

  6. Poland is a quite religious country (but not truly religious, it’s all most of the time for show, you know, real and charitable Catholics are rare), so it’s obvious that we do have Religion classes in schools. During communism those classes took place in the small rooms in the church’s vicinity, but for many, many years it’s been a normal (but not compulsory*) subject in schools. But mind you that it’s only the CATHOLIC religion. It’s taught by a priest or a nun, or maaaaybe someone from outside of the church. You won’t hear about any other religions during those classes. I tried speaking with the nun in high school and she didn’t want to do any classes on other religions, I was told to do the research myself. Thanks for nothing.

    And technically, in theory there is an option for “others”, in the form of ethics, but in my experience schools didn’t provide such classes at all. If someone didn’t take part in Religion classes, they had to sit on the bench in the corridor or just do something with their life for 45 minutes two times a week. It’s bullcrap. It’s insane.

    *Not compulsory, BUT many parents are driven by their belief in “tradition” or are just catholic fanatics, so they will make their children take part in those classes. Thankfully more and more parents are more reasonable and decide to not allow their children to take part in those useless classes. Until you’re 18 years old you have no right to speak for yourself in school and only parents or your guardians are allowed to decide about you.

    If you ask me, I would throw away those classes from all public schools immediately. They don’t do any good to anyone. In fact, they can do some bad to many people.

  7. Our RE classes you learn about most main religions not just Christianity.

    The also talk about morals and other topics like that aswell

  8. We have government funded religious schools too. They often get religion lesson. Public (non religious) schools can be different from school to school.

  9. Don’t know the situation now but in the 80s/90s we had “kristendomskundskab” (literal translation: knowledge of Christianity) one hour every week, which your parents could exempt you from. At the time I was obviously thrilled to be exempt (no alternative class for exempted, you just had 45 minutes extra recess that day) but it doesn’t make sense. Afaik the class wasn’t dogmatic, and whether you believe or not, Christianity is the one most important factor understanding the last 1000 years of Danish history, culture and daily life, making it as important as any other non-scientific topic in school.

  10. To be clear, RE was mandatory from memory, and in it we learnt about religions and their practices. There was no need to offer an alternative.

    The occasional services that were held however were a different matter and certain children were opted out. Usually to sit in the library for the duration.

  11. No, we don’t have religious classes in schools. Religious classes are organised by the church after the school hours and more or less in a seperated place from the school.

    Students can choose a subject Religions and ethics but this is optional and it teaches them about different religions.

  12. simple opt-out option, with no alternatives. The priest sometimes joked around asking the exemption to recover from previous PE class. Usually JW and non religious chose opt-out

    A proposal to add a “Civic Education” alternative was mocked and rejected before it could be discussed in the Council.

  13. In Germany we (sadly) do have RE classes.
    Most of the time you can choose between catholic, evangelical and Werte und Normen (values and standards). The latter is the option for everyone, who is not Christian.
    In my elemantary/primary school we also had a class for muslims.

  14. In Spain you can take religion (they give different options) or ethics and civil education.

  16. Went to multiple protestant schools throughout my life, elementary school essentially only taught about Christianity and Judaism, while middle school and high school religious class tried tackling more beliefs, including atheism, agnosticism, hinduism, buddhism and of course Islam. There were no seperate classes nor alternatives.

  17. In Italy Religious education is taught as a part of an international treaty between Italy and Vatican and it’s mandatory unless your parents opt out (you are allowed to choose at 18yo), but the grades are meaningless. When mom went to school in the 70s their teacher was a priest, while mine were regular teachers who met the requirements to teach religious education.

    I opted out in high school and i could choose among: leaving the school (in this case they had to try to schedule the lesson in the first or last hour), staying in class in silence, or going to the library to study alone. I picked the library. The teacher often invited me to stay, as a lot of topics she explained were interesting. She even talked about euthanasia, the crucifix in class dilemma, moral values vs religious values, the Da Vinci Code, the Armenian genocide…

  18. We do not have any RE classes in the official curriculum in Estonia.

    Some schools offer stuff like “Religions of the world” as an elective subject or as an compulsory extra subject for those who chose the humanities branch in high school, but this is not a bible class, but a general introduction to the main religions and their development in time.

    Edit: I took the religions elective and it was a great class, really interesting discussions and we also watched some movies about some religions, kids really liked it.

  19. We used to but it was stopped some time between 2005 and 2010. Some high schools may offer religious studies as elective courses but I’m not sure.

  20. We used to have RE classes with a secular alternative. In primary those classes were pretty explicitly Christian but changed in secondary school to be about religions in general. There also used to be one exceptional year were you could not choose because everyone got to have a bible literature class together. The class was far more secular then it sounds, primarily set up to analyze the texts in their meaning and their general importance in literature more broadly with recurring motives.

    This system however has been superceded by a new one after the Christian Socialists were voted out of the government coalition and the new government separated church and state. Since then only ethics classes exist but to my knowledge religions are still discussed in those.

  22. I went to a “secular” school where the lord’s prayer was recited every morning, hymns were sung daily, girls were banned from wearing trousers, and our RE teacher was a Christian who talked a lot of shit on other religions but never her own. We actually witnessed a screaming match between her and a Muslim student who politely disagreed with her take on Ramadan.

    Psalm books and other religious stuff was given out to every student a few times.

    My school was probably a bit more extreme than most, but there’s a lot of cultural Christianity infused in secular education in the UK. More often it’s just the singing of hymns and maybe a Christmas carol service or something.

  23. We do, but the extent to which the class is about the catholic religion is determined solely by the teacher. Sometimes you have a priest sometimes a teacher who graduated in philosophy. Your parents can always opt out for you by signing a paper at the begging of every year.

    There’s no alternative for the minorities, but usually the class is scheduled as first or last of the day allowing students to arrive later/leave early.
    When this is not possibile you can opt to: remain in the classroom but mind your business (I was hilariously never allowed to do homeworks in that case), leave the classroom and join a janitor (this was fun most of the times, they had unlimited credits for the vending machines).

  24. In high school the default was philosophy/ethics class, you could choose religions, but at least in my class no one did.

  25. Yes there is religious education classes run by the respective churches/religious communties through their own teachers (paid by the state). Most mainstream groups do this, catholics, protestants, orthodox, muslims have their own religious education classes. If you are not religious or do not want to attend your religions classes you (from age 14) or your parents can opt out of them, giving you a free hour (in higher classes). I think starting from next year there will be an ethics alternative, so you do not get a free hour but have to attend the secular alternative class.

    To be honest, I don’t think having a religious class run by churches in schools is a good idea. It’s done due to a treaty with the Vatican state (Konkordat), but that could be changed without real reprecussions. If somebody wants religious education for their children they can go to their respective religions, no need for the state to provide this.

  26. 90% of primary schools and 50% of secondary schools in ireland are under the patronage of the catholic church. I attended a catholic convent school from age 7 to 18. Religious education was a compulsory subject, and it taught the catechism of the catholic church, stories from the bible etc.
    The most religious diversity present in my experience was a couple of protestant pupils, and they were allowed to either sit outside the classroom or read a book during that class time.
    There are some specifically protestant schools that protestant kids can attend and get the same kind of religious education for their own faith background (usually church of ireland)

    There are now two state run muslim schools under the patronage of the irish islamic federation also, but they are both in dublin. There are also a small number of ‘educate together’ schools which are specifically non-denominational. children learn about many different faiths there, more similar to how religious education works in secular countries.

  27. When I was at school it was called RMPS – Religious, Moral & Philosophical Studies. I just remember studying Buddhism a bit to be honest and different branches of Christianity. The rest of the class was right vs wrong and grey areas and stuff. Very boring class.

  28. Ya we had religious classes in Ireland but they acted more so as social studies classes, we didn’t read the bible or anything. We talked abiut ethics and mental health more than anything.

  30. We had comparative religions study, taught by a devout Catholic, which was pretty funny because existing religions, like Christianity and dead ones, like the Egyptian pantheon were being described side by side.

  31. Parents can choose between “secular ethics”, “world religions” or one of the four traditional confessions. Theoretically they can choose any one of the six, but this is often limited by the availability of teachers.

  32. Everyone gets two hours of either religion or ethics a week. Schools that are own by the state/community/municipality have to offer all recognised religions. More than half of all schools are Catholic though, which means they only give Catholic religion class.

    In practice these religion classes are largely general ethics, only a small part of the material is specifically about Catholicism. There were several Muslims at my school who followed the classes without any issue (of course they weren’t the most ultra-religious Muslims).

  33. No religion in schools, only mentioned in History classes, or Geography.

    We have ethics in elementary schools and philosophy, sociology and psychology in high school.

  34. Didn’t knew something like this existed until now.

    The only thing which had some religion in it was ethics class. And in it we basically went through religions like Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism.. but mostly the class was about our state and how it works…

  35. In Lithuania we have either Catholic RE or Ethics as a choice. I have not heard about other religions being taught or talked about, but Lithuania is majorly Catholic or atheist

  36. >I hear some instances like *this* in certain countries.

    That’s media bullshit. Its main loopholes are:

    ​

    > Court: Muslim boy must attend NRW school’s Catholic service

    No, the court did not say that at all. In fact

    > German Constitutional Court rejected a lawsuit.

    So they don’t say anything about the case, other than

    > According to the court, the boy’s parents did not make a strong enough argument for the judges to consider the case.

    Yep. When you go before a court, you have to present evidence. Just claiming there is evidence *somewhere* isn’t going to kick it.

    No court in the world will consider your fantasies to be real. You have to provide evidence.

    ​

    >Muslim parents who wanted their son to be exempt from the religious teachings at a publicly funded Catholic school

    If they don’t want the boy to be teached Catholic religion, why did they sign him up at a Catholic school from the very beginning? There are plenty of other schools they could have chosen.

    And no, having to ride a bicycle to school 3.3km isn’t a violation of your constitutional rights. Smaller childs even get a state-sponsored bus lift for free. Later on, it’s going to cost a minimum fare, and you can even get that one for free if you prove that you are poor.

  37. At least when I was at school back in the late 90s/early 00s, we had Religion as one of our obligatory subjects within Social Sciences. We mostly learned about Christianity, Islam and Judaism (which I guess are the ones we encounter most in our daily lives here), and a little bit about Buddhism and Hinduism as well, but barely anything about any other religion unfortunately.

    The focus was not really much at all on reading scriptures or anything like that, but much more on cultural aspects. We did of course learn about the key beliefs of the different religious faiths and how the differed from each other – but the main focus was on practical aspects and how religion impacted modern people in their daily lives. What their different holidays and celebrations were like, why they dress a certain way, why the eat certain things and such. Which I think was a great way of approaching it. It was just a way of getting to understand more about other people’s culture in a neutral and non-preachy way, which feels really important.

    When it comes to learning about ethics and morals and such, that was actually much more part of Philosophy studies, which in turn was part of Psychology studies at that time. Or at least, it was taught by the Psychology teacher as a closely related subject.

  38. For atheists, in my school we have to do philosophy if we’re not taking religion.

  39. We have none in Russia (thank god, with the tightening grip of Russian Orthodox Church we don’t need them, they would be misapplied), but I’ve visited Finland as an exchange student during my middle school days for a short time and in the school my hosts were studying there were world religion lessons as electives. If applied correctly I think they are very cool.

  40. We have RE classes but they aren’t focused on a specific religion it’s just learning about them and also crime and punishment, environment, human rights, persecution of religions in history and there is always two sides of the argument including non religious

  41. The article you linked refers to Northrhine-Westphalia, a state in Germany. The article claims that

    >NRW is the only state that still maintains publicly funded religious schools.

    and one of the people it quotes claims that there is “a high number” of Catholic schools. I’m afraid that to someone who doesn’t know NRW, the article makes my home state sound like a hotbed of Catholic extremism, so let me point out that this “high number” is actually 200 out of 5800 schools.

    Other people already described how RE is usually handled here.

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