Religion in public school? Yes, thank you!José María de MoyaThe public school religion teacher is a hero".Rodrigo Martinez will be one of the speakers at the Ibero-American Meeting of Humanities Professors to be held in Madrid on May 6 and 7, promoted by Siena Education.
Teachers of Religion, History, Philosophy or Literature have an appointment in this meeting that will combine lectures, conferences, workshops and high-level cultural visits for teachers from Spain and Latin America.
This Encounter takes the baton, extended, from the I Iberoamerican Meeting of Religion TeachersThe event, held last year, was very well received and had an excellent response and participation.
Rodrigo Martinez is president of the Regional Board of Catholic Education of the bishopric of San Isidro (Argentina) and, for years, has been studying the presence of religious education in public or state-run schools in Latin America.
This is, in fact, the theme of his presentation at the Humanities Meeting. In this interview with Omnes, Martinez underlines how school religious education needs a broad reflection on popular religiosity and a formation in the subject and in the didactics of the teaching staff to respond to the current challenges of teaching.
In Latin America, the panorama of religious education in schools varies from country to country. Could you draw a map of religious education today?
The first distinction to be made in relation to the presence of religious education in schools is between those countries that have the possibility, in their legislation, that religious education can be taught in public or state-run schools and those that do not.
In countries with a Hispanic or Portuguese tradition in Latin America, we have ten cases in which religious instruction is allowed in state-run schools in one of the models and another ten that are not.
Among those who do have this education in public schools, the model that seems to prevail is the "public school model". multi-faith. In this model, the state authorizes a number of religious denominations to make their programs and train their teachers for school religious instruction. This is the model, for example, found in Chile, Colombia, or Brazil.
It is true that, in practice, school religious instruction is often reduced to Catholicism, in some places to Catholicism and Evangelicalism, and there is no experience with other religions, although, for example, as in Chile, the legislation contemplates a very large number of religions that could provide religious instruction.
From some areas, more critical of the presence of religious education, there is talk of a non-denominational model, which presents the religious phenomenon as a cultural fact to be studied because of its cultural importance, etc., but in practice this model has hardly any presence in the region. Perhaps, Bolivia tends a little to this type, but it does not seem to have much roots in Latin America.
On the other hand, the Catholic model as the only option hardly exists, only in Peru. Most countries opt for the Catholic model as the only multi-faithof Christian roots, as we have seen.
How do these countries define the denominations to which they grant permission, and is this done in relation to their presence in society?
-Generally, these countries have a Catholic tradition. That was the prevailing model. Later, through successive reforms of educational legislation, the presence of other religious denominations became possible. In the case of Colombia, for example, the law speaks of the Catholic Christian confession and non-Catholic Christian confessions. In Brazil, where evangelical denominations are stronger, they appear in more detail. However, in general, there is no such specification based on the percentage of presence.
In the case of Latin American countries, is there stability in their educational legislation?
-The models that we now find in each country are the result of successive reforms, although it is true that there have not been major changes in recent years. There have been variations perhaps related to curricular designs, etc.
On the other hand, in some countries, we have seen the presentation of appeals by some political movement or civil association to eliminate religious instruction from the school curriculum. In relation to the results of this type of action, we have seen three different consequences.
In Argentina there is a federal system, in which each province determines its educational system; previously, there were two provinces that taught religious education in public schools: Salta and Tucumán. In Salta there was an appeal against the presence of religious education in state-run schools, which reached the supreme court of the nation and religious education in public schools was eliminated in the form it was proposed: confessional and Catholic. After the appeal, it was enabled outside school hours. Now there is only one province left with this possibility, Tucumán.
In the case of Brazil, there was a similar initiative. In this case, the presentation of an appeal so that the teaching of Religion would not be confessional. In this case, the Brazilian court upheld the constitutionality of confessional religious education.
The third case is found in Costa Rica, where there was a presentation, also on confessionalism, which arose in relation to the formation of Religion teachers, which was the exclusive power of the Catholic Church. Faced with this appeal, the superior court ruled that there could be another type of training, so that school religious education was no longer exclusively Catholic. This led to a reform of the curriculum towards a model that could be called eclectic.
What we see is that the issue is mainly centered on confessionality, so the multi-confessional or inter-confessional models may be a way to continue sustaining the space for religious education in the state school.
How is the formation of teachers of Religion in these countries addressed and what are the challenges?
-The panorama is diverse. In the confessional or multi-confessional models, the religious confession is usually given the power of formation. In this field, the Catholic Church, because of its long tradition in this task, has many more resources for teacher training.
Thinking about the challenges of the formation of these teachers, I believe that, speaking of the model where there is religious instruction in the state school, these challenges are centered, above all, on achieving a formation in accordance with the identity of this school discipline. A formation that possesses conceptual clarity of what is the teaching of religion and the capacity to present it to students, of whom we do not have to presuppose that they are Catholics.
In Latin America we have a majority of baptized people, but that does not mean that they know their faith. In the chaos of religion, even more so because we are talking about knowledge that does not imply faith, but can awaken it. This would be very interesting, to know how to transmit and present the knowledge of the Catholic religion in such a way that those students who have faith, through the subject can strengthen their faith; that those who are searching can question themselves and perhaps find an answer and those who do not have faith can contrast their position with the view of the Church.
In a world we could call post-secular, what does religious education bring to the school environment?
-The post-secular concept was born at the end of the XIX century where the end of religions was promulgated. A moment that coincides with the birth of legal systems in many Latin American countries.
History confirms that religion does not disappear. We are in a world that is religious, religion is, in fact, still present, although perhaps in a different form. That is why I emphasize the need to discover how this yearning for religiosity is now being presented.
In Latin America, for example, I miss a reflection, in the whole curriculum of the teaching of school religion, of what popular religiosity means. Popular religiosity in Latin America is a very strong element and it seems that it does not enter in these study plans. I believe that this could be a way to discover some of the realities that make up the religious identity of human beings. In the case of Latin America, the Latin American people, beyond the secularization that exists, coexist with these popular religious expressions: people who are not practicing in the strict sense but who have their devotions, traditions, who continue to baptize their children, for example. The other way is to discover the value of religion for coexistence in today's world.
Openness to intercultural and interreligious dialogue is, at present, an urgent challenge, because it helps coexistence and fraternity and this is an intrinsic value of the Catholic religion and constitutes, in the face of the states, a strong argument.
Beyond the "theoretical discussions" on a daily basis, people are still looking for religious answers, sometimes in philosophies or superstitions, but they are still searching. The teaching of Religion can be, in this context, a natural way to find the answers.
