Juan José Tamayo (CCS)
The teaching of religion in school is one of the unresolved political and religious transition in Spain that, 37 years after the adoption of the Constitution, yet still not been approved. The evil of origin lies in the Agreement on Education and Cultural Affairs between the Holy See and the Spanish Government, of international standing, signed by the secretary of state of the Vatican Cardinal Villot and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Spain Marcelino Oreja the January 3, 1979, which establishes the mandatory inclusion of the teaching of the Catholic religion in the school curriculum levels Early Childhood Education, Basic General Education, Unified Multipurpose Baccalaureate and vocational training in all education centers in conditions comparable to other disciplines.
The agreement establishes that the church hierarchy develop programs to teach Catholic religion in school and propose textbooks and teaching materials relating to such education, and that the Catholic teachers are elected by the bishops. The payment thereof, however, runs the State. Here except the old adage “he who pays commands” which is replaced by “he who pays, abides” is made.
The successive laws on education, far from solving the problem, have worsened, and the current LOMCE has led to the extreme aggravation. First, it forces students to choose the subject of Catholic Religion and Civic Values. This implies that the school educates two types of ethics: religious and secular, and that those who choose the kind of Catholicism are deprived of education in civic and indirectly from the obligation to practice them in the public sphere values. Because how will practice values that have not learned?
With the LOMCE, the Catholic religion becomes measurable, and qualification account for the average grade of the curriculum and to get a scholarship. What is being assessed is not the knowledge of the history of religions, but the beliefs of students who belong to the individual sphere and not evaluable. How, in a secular state, religious beliefs can play such a crucial role in such important issues as the granting or not a grant or approved or suspense in the school curriculum? Perhaps we are not in a secular state
Third, being a confessional teaching of religion, a double interference occurs: an alien discipline scientific content and an authority, that of the Catholic hierarchy, intervening in an area that is not within its competence, which is that of education.
At the absurdities indicated must add one more for the design of the new curriculum Catholic Religion Primary and secondary education that prepared the Spanish Episcopal Conference. Contents are in their catechetical all prone to fundamentalism. The thought conveyed is androcentric; language, patriarchal; conception of Christianity, mythical; the approach of faith, dogmatic; exposure, anachronistic. I refer to the agenda: the creation and God’s relationship with man: God as “Father of humanity that wants our happiness”; Adam and Eve; “God chose Mary to help your child become man”; “Jesus, Son of God, became man, living and growing up in a family; teach prayers of petition and thanksgiving. Catechesis back to school and does so with macho tone of the most rancid times of national Catholicism. So who loses is Christianity, which is discredited.
We are therefore faced another missed opportunity to build education secularism and to develop a critical study of religions as part of the history of cultures.
Juan José Tamayo is a theologian and professor at the Carlos III University
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