“Education” is today one of the most important challenges that Europe has to face. And “school” is the privileged place where starting and managing educational paths, strategically oriented. Education at school has in fact an extremely crucial role, because, in addition to the transfer of knowledge, it should provide those cultural inputs that, together with those coming from family education and from social and cultural background where young people grow, it will go to determine the development of the future European citizens. It is for this reason that, in today Europe, it is hardly felt the need to think about the opportunity of teaching “religion” at school. The need is also due to the existence of a variety of ways of teaching this subject at school in the different European countries. This implies juridical choices and educational policies not devoid of consequences, that should be probably reconsidered in a unifying and shared view at European level.

In Italy to be a teacher of religion, also in a public school, is indispensable to obtain the bishop’s approval. This practice has been going in force since 1929 with the Lateran Agreements, but it is in contrast with the EU rules that forbid any kind of discrimination based on religious credo of the worker. Bruxelles has then opened a dossier and sent a request of information to Berlusconi government. The 2000 EU directive against discrimination affirms in fact that a worker cannot be discriminated for reasons “based on religion”. Further, the equal treatment of workers leaving out their religious faith, has also guaranteed by the United Nation Human Rights Declaration, by the Teatry of Maastricht and by the European Convention on Human Rights. On the contrary, it seems that the rule in force in Italy for eighty years and confirmed in 1985 by the Italian Prime Minister of that time, goes in another direction.

Pope Benedict XVI defends the teaching of religion in Italian schools, asserting that it does not represent “an interference or a limitation of freedom”. The teaching of religion at school has been established by the Agreement between the Catholic Church and the Fascist Italy, considering it as “the basis and the crowning of the public education”. In 1984 it was established that “Italian Republic, recognizing the value of religious culture and considering that the principles of Roman Catholicism are part of the historic heritage of Italian people, will continue to guarantee, in the framework of the aims of the school, the teaching of catholic religion in all public schools except universities”. At present, in the Italian schools, the hour of religion is not compulsory. The parents of the students or the students themselves, if older then fourteen, can freely choose if attending or not – going out of the school or attending disciplines – the hour of religion, communicating their decision when entering the school at the first year, while preserving the possibility to make a different choice in the coming years.

Anyway we should think about the fact that, in Italy, the teaching of religion at school is not in debate. But it is not like this in other European countries. In Berlin, from some years, the hour of religion has been replaced by the teaching of “ethics” and, the past 26th of April, the people of Berlin have been called to the polls for expressing their vote in a referendum asking the reintroduction of religion teaching at school. According to the rule in force, in fact, the hour of ethics is compulsory, on the contrary who wants to attend the lesson of religion has to make a request. The flow to the polls has been very low, only the 29% of the total who were entitled went to vote and the majority declared against the replacement of the compulsory teaching of religion and in favour of the lesson of ethics.

An overview of EU at 27, plus Turkey and Croatia, points out that the teaching of religion is majority, although the religion in question is not always the catholic one and, sometimes, the religion taught is not just one: in fact, this is the case of only six countries (Croatia, Italy, Ireland, Malta, Portugal , Slovakia) for the catholic religion, two countries for the orthodox one (Cyprus and Greece) and one country for the Islamic one (Turkey). In twelve countries the religious teaching concerns more religions, not only in terms of more creeds, Christian, Hebraism, Islam and Buddhism but also in the sense of providing the fundamentals of a variety of religions.

To these country we have to add other six that offer different Christian confessions (Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant) – sometimes in the same school or in the same region, sometimes in different places of the country- Bulgaria where there is the teaching of Orthodox and Islamic religions and Finland where there are the teaching of different Protestant religions. There are only three countries where there is no religion at school: France (with the exception of the Alsatia-Lorena region), Hungary (where religion is an optional subject and extra-curricula) and Slovenia. Further, there are countries in which religion is not taught in some places or schools (Sweden), in some cantons of Switzerland or in some schools (like in Bulgaria). In other six countries (Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Portugal and Luxembourg) the teaching of religion is not part of the curriculum, but it is an alternative to a laic subject like “ethics” in Berlin.

For sure, the multicultural ferments characterizing Europe make us thinking more deeply about the themes discussed and more concretely about the school programmes, the methods of teaching and the administrative organizations of the schools. It is necessary to adopt new procedure and to introduce new rules for the management of the education system. Above all, it is to point out that the teaching of religion is today involved with the intercultural dimension that is peculiar to the school-society and then, it is necessary to make a change concerning schemes and ways of communication, in order to bring the expressions of human spirituality back to the cultural-social contexts that have determined them, trying to satisfied the need for the interreligious dialogue so indispensable for solving , in the medium term, situations of discrimination and intolerance. It should be desirable that the new meaning of “European citizenship” could be the basis for a deep remarks on the theme, generating renewed political programmes and projects that could lead to new educational strategies, including the teaching of religion at school.

The reference to citizenship is necessary, in consideration of the new concept it is going to assume and that is based on an idea of citizenship related to the experience and linked to its practice as process of social inclusion and individual or collective responsibility. These are intended as conditions for the development of the personal identity, also of the religious identity and then as an instrument for comparison and tolerance. What we probably need is a lesson of “European ethics” , where the “religious fact” is faced in a laic manner.

The Author is: Economist – Expert in International Strategy and E.U.