Religion pushing its way into education all over the world

“Religious studies should be taught in French state schools as an antidote to intolerance,” President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Tuesday in a speech to educators that could upset the country’s fiercely secular teaching establishment.

France’s official secularism fostered mutual respect and understanding but children should be taught in general terms about the world’s great religions, he said. Secularism has been the cornerstone of state education for more than 100 years after bitter battles between the state and the Roman Catholic Church. Conspicuous religious symbols such as Muslim headscarves or large crosses are banned. Sarkozy wrote in a speech whose text was due to be mailed to every teacher in France: “I am convinced that we should not leave the issue of religion at the school door. The origins of the great religions, their visions of mankind and the world should be studied ... (in the spirit) of a sociological, cultural, historical analysis which would allow a better understanding of the fact of religion.”

The president said France’s Enlightenment values and the secularism of its schools were the best antidotes to religious confrontation that could lead to a clash of civilisations, but there remained a place for discussion of religion itself.

Sarkozy has challenged the broad national consensus on secularism of public bodies before. His was a lone voice calling for a revision of a 1905 law separating church and state that would have allowed some state funding for building mosques.

And France is not the only country where secular education is under attack. In Canada the issue of whether the state should fund religious schools has become a major election issue and in Australia there is a suggestion that the country’s universities should ditch their secular ethos and let religion in.

Religious bodies have always known the value of getting their message drummed into children at an early age before their critical faculties are developed, and in a place where they can’t escape. That is why their presence is so strong in education. And now, it seems, they are making progress in even the most fiercely secular nations.

See also: Talk of a higher power has a place – just not in schools