Religious Education Under Threat in Berlin

[Kellanved]

When, in 1996, Berlin's senator for education, proposed introducing mandatory ethic classes in the city's high schools, he set a slow ball rolling. Almost a decade later, a final decision is about to be taken.

At issue is the system of religious education which has been in place in the German capital since before WWII. It is a complex model allowing school children to choose which religion, if any, they wish to include in their school timetables.

While the rule, which is based on a constitutional clause for religious freedom, is only fair, the problem is that given half a chance to cut back on class hours, a large percentage of students fall over themselves to do so.

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http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1526501,00.html

[Jdemsindiana]

1. I've never heard of this

But Im sure most repulicans would approve

[bobbieinok]

2. until recently, students (parents) chose the Catholic or Lutheran

religious class

the more conservative Christians to whom I talked tended to be very unhappy with the classes.......the teachers are not allowed to preach or evangelize.......according to many conservative Christians, most protestant religious instructors are atheists or agnostics

at least for the protestant classes, the instructor does not have to be a believer.....s/he must merely take the necessary courses and pass the required qualifying exams

in 62, coming from a 'good' Southern Baptist background, I experienced a fair amount of cultural shock with the Baptist university student group I attended in Germany......all the people preparing to teach religion (mostly female) as well as those studying theology would all pull out their Greek New Testaments when there was any discussion about theology or the Bible

.......

with the high number of Turkish and other Islamic students in many German areas, I kept wondering if the schools were going to have another option: Islamic classes

[Kellanved]

3. re: Islamic Classes

In theory, yes. Most schools offer Protestant, Catholic and Jewish religious classes. Many German states also offer Islam.
The rules allow any organized religion to offer classes ; the instructors are supposed to have a degree for teaching their religion.
An added twist is, that a few extreme Islamic groups have managed to sue their place in - despite not having sufficiently educated teachers.

PS: There are schools with Buddhist, Hinduist, ... classes - it is just not that widespread.