I do not know if you have noticed, but when politicians do not know what to talk about, need to cover up some of their corrupt acts or need to change their discourse, they always resort to the well-worn topic of "the Religion class" or the Church-State Agreements of 1979, that is, to take the former out of school and to revise the latter, and even revoke them. All in the name of freedom, secularism and progressivism. A moment that we are now living intensely.
But, what is ERE (School Religious Education)? Why Religion in schools? Is it the same as catechesis? Is ERE voluntary or compulsory? And in public schools? What and how is it evaluated? Who teaches it? Why do they want to do away with it? What difficulties do we Religion teachers have on a daily basis? I will try to answer these questions with simplicity and clarity, from my experience as a teacher of Religion in the public school for the last 24 years.
The ERE in the Constitution and the 1979 Agreements
As there are many attacks, comments and all kinds of tricks against the ERE, the teachers of Religion in the public school have had to learn some basic legislation to defend ourselves. There are two fundamental articles in the Spanish Constitution of 1978, Article 16 and 27.
Article 16 states: "The ideological, religious and worship freedom of individuals and communities is guaranteed without any limitation in its manifestations other than that necessary for the maintenance of public order protected by law.". And in section 3: "No confession shall have a state character. The public authorities shall take into account the religious beliefs of Spanish society and shall maintain the consequent relations of cooperation with the Catholic Church and other denominations.".
It is in tune with what the Second Vatican Council says: "Between the State and the Church there must be mutual respect for the autonomy of each party.".
Article 27 of the Constitution proclaims: "Everyone has the right to education. Freedom of education is recognized.", y "The public authorities guarantee the right of parents to ensure that their children receive the religious and moral formation that is in accord with their own convictions."
Finally, Article 10 states: "The rules relating to the fundamental rights and freedoms recognized by the Constitution shall be interpreted in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the international treaties and agreements on the same matters ratified by Spain."
And the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says in its article 26.3: "Parents shall have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children". In short: Spain is a non-denominational state, not secular and much less secularist. This means that there is no official religion in Spain, but there is an obligation to make possible the constitutional right of parents to choose the type of training and education they believe appropriate for their children, with respect to their religious beliefs and ideologies. The Catholic Religion class is not a privilege of the Church, but a right of parents recognized in our Constitution (arts. 16 and 27) and in the Declaration of Human Rights.
The current legislation, in accordance with the 1979 Church-State agreements, states that the aforementioned ERE (school religious education) is mandatory for schools and optional for students. That is to say, the schools are obliged to offer it, but the students are not obliged to take it.
Parents have to decide at the beginning of the school year or when they enroll their children in school whether to opt for Religion or Values. Until a couple of years ago, the other option was "Educational Attention". This last term, better known as alternative, was confusing and mischievous, because it made many parents think that children who did not take Religion were going to receive something similar to "private" classes. This was not the case. In the best of cases, the educational attention dealt with a plan to promote reading (in the Community of Madrid) or work on a book of values; but the reality was very different: games, movies, computer room, free study..... Quite unfair competition.
With the current Education Law (LOMCE), the optional Religion is a subject called Ethical and Social Values, which is evaluable but very open to the free interpretation of the teacher who teaches it, so we return to a similar situation. And even in some bilingual schools the subject of Values is taught in English, while Religion is in Spanish, which makes many parents opt for the former. After a lot of "fighting", we are getting that this is not the case.
The time used for the subject of Religion is two weekly sessions with a total of an hour and a half in primary education and a proportional time in early childhood education. But the LOMCE has not been developed by the Royal Decrees necessary to regulate a myriad of details for its operation, and has left the door open to reduce the timetable to a single session and even to the disappearance of the subject at some educational stage. We will have to wait and see what happens with the new government.
The teachers in charge of teaching it must have the same training and qualifications as the rest of the teachers in the center. That is to say, the diploma in Teaching (currently Degree) in any of its specialties (for Early Childhood and Primary Education), the degree in Theology or Religious Sciences (for ESO and Baccalaureate), and the DEI (Ecclesiastical Declaration of Suitability), today known as DECA in both cases. The teacher is proposed by the bishop and hired by the competent educational authority (in the case of Madrid, by the Consejería de Educación de la Comunidad de Madrid).
ERE and catechesis
The subject of Religion ensures the integral formation of the person. For an education to be truly integral, it must work on all areas of the person: the physical, through Physical Education, psychomotor skills and sports; the mental, with the traditional subjects, Language, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, Music, etc.; the emotions and feelings and the relationship with others; and finally, the spiritual with the Religion class.
Evidently, these areas are not totally watertight and interact with each other, forming a whole that is the person, created in the image and likeness of God. If we work on the first three and forget the fourth, the formation of the person is clearly incomplete. It is about the integral formation of the student, favoring multiple intelligences and developing all the dimensions of the person, including the spiritual and emotional.
In current pedagogical language, it is developed in what is called "competencies" (competence in linguistic communication, social and civic competence, cultural and artistic competence, competence in learning to learn, competence in autonomy and personal initiative, competence in knowledge and interaction with the physical world). I will not spend time explaining how the subject of Religion works and how it fits into each of these competencies.
Religion class is not catechesis. They are distinct, but complementary to each other. The Religion class takes place in the school. That of the catechesis, the parish, the Christian communities and above all, the family. In the catechesis the necessary knowledge to live the faith and to celebrate it is received. Hence, a great part of the catechesis deals with the preparation to receive the sacraments.
In catechesis, children (I will refer to children's catechesis for the sake of comparison with ERE, although adult catechesis exists) will learn the prayers, gestures and liturgical meanings; they will study catechism, the sacraments and participate in religious celebrations. They should also become aware of belonging to the Christian community, to the Church. It is true that some of the topics covered in catechesis are common to those of ERE, but their approach and methodology must be, by definition, different.
Our roots
In school religious education, we work on faith-culture dialogue. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive, as some say. The child in school learns to know the environment around him and to understand the world in which he is going to live and is given the "tools" (knowledge and strategies) to be able to adapt to it and survive successfully. And whether we like it or not, we have had 2000 years of Christianity and 4000 years of Judaism. The basis, the roots of our current society is Greece (Philosophy), Rome (Law) and Christianity (which in turn has its roots in Judaism).
And all this cannot be ignored. Some examples: our holidays are Christian -in Madrid, of all the holidays we have, only the Constitution, Labor Day or Community Day are not religious holidays-; our names, those of our streets and those of some localities have a Christian etymology or a religious fact or character; many of our greetings, social formulas, sayings and proverbs are of religious origin, for its biblical reference or the history of Christianity; our landscapes, urban or rural, are dotted with religious buildings and symbols: churches, cathedrals, monasteries, hermitages, monuments, crosses...; our history, literature, art, music, have a multitude of facts, characters and religious works or related to Religion.
The faith-culture dialogue is a dialogue with the rest of the subjects in order to understand the world from a Christian worldview. The contribution of Christianity to our culture is taught: to science, history, art, philosophy, literature...
And as for values... where do the values that are given in the subject with the same name come from? Solidarity, empathy, generosity, forgiveness, tolerance, forgiveness, peace, love... These are evangelical values. Education in values is an essential pillar of the Religion curriculum!
General objectives of the Religion area
- To be more specific, here are the general objectives of the Religion Area for Primary Education, from 6 to 12 years old:
- To know the basic aspects of religions, relating them to Christianity. To recognize the founders and some distinctive elements of the great current religions.
- To know the Bible, its structure and meaning.
- To discover God's action in nature and in the person.
- Identify some fundamental characters of salvation history and their response of faith, in particular the person of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary.
- To value the newness of God's love that saves us from sin and death.
- Identify the meaning of some basic formulations, expressions and texts of the Christian message.
- Identify the Church, know the presence of God and his grace in the sacraments, and the ecclesial service rendered by the apostles and their successors.
- To understand and distinguish the sacred, festive and celebratory meaning of feasts and their rites. Analyze the hierarchy of values, attitudes and norms that make up the Christian being, and apply them to the different situations of life.
- life.
- To value that the Christian faith implies assuming responsibilities, the sense of Christian action and commitment, and an attitude of tolerance and respect for the ethical systems of different religions.
- To know, value and respect the religious, artistic and cultural heritage.
- To discover that man's eternal destiny begins here as a gift arising from Christ's victory over death.
Multidisciplinary knowledge
Religious education does not evaluate faith (impossible by definition), as the detractors of the subject claim. It evaluates concrete and scientific knowledge and content: the names of the major prophets, the kings of Israel, the location of the Red Sea or Mount Sinai, books of the Bible and their location in the Old Testament or in the New, knowing how to draw a map of Israel in the first century and locate the Jordan River, Lake Gennesaret and the main cities in the life of Jesus, to cite a few examples.
This faith-culture dialogue turns the Religion course into a multidisciplinary area, a compendium of many fields of knowledge: history, geography, literature, art, music, film, philosophy, morals, ethics, science... Thus, a student who attends and takes advantage of Religion classes will be better prepared than one who does not.
And not only for those who study art history, as I was told not long ago by a graduate in this subject, but I myself have been able to experience it in a cultural outing with children of 9 or 10 years of a school where I worked years ago, to the Prado Museum.
Ignorance, a great enemy
Moreover, faith needs formation, and ignorance is one of its greatest enemies. Ignorance and lack of formation make of our faith a giant with feet of clay, which collapses with nothing.
How many young people from religious families, who during their childhood and adolescence have even attended the parish and frequented the sacraments, arrive at the university or start working, and in a few months they abandon their life of piety and move away from the Church because some classmate or teacher has told them that Religion is all lies, myths that science has overcome.
They talk to them about the theory of the evolution of the species, the Big Bang, or any other theory of the origin of the universe, they recommend them readings by well-argued atheist philosophers, they talk to them about the riches of the Church, the Inquisition... And then that young person, or those young people, without adequate training, feel defrauded, swindled, cheated, deceived... defeated!
With a good religious formation that includes a serious and rigorous exegesis, the young person will have enough strength and security to refute all this bombardment with serious and scientific arguments and be victorious in the defense of his faith without complexes.
But returning to the subject of this article, we can say that it is common to find many adult Christians (even with university education) with the same formation they received when they prepared to receive their first Communion. Imagine what would happen if people were to remain with the academic level acquired at the age of eight or nine in Language or Mathematics. Well, that's how we are in religious matters.
And if you don't believe me, there are the TV quizzes and what happens when they ask something about religion: from answering that the first three kings of Israel were the "magi", to saying that the commandments are twelve.
Religion Teacher
