Ready for the sermon

After many years of incessant struggles around the question of whether to teach religious disciplines in secondary schools and, if taught, then in what form, the bottom line we have, as the Ministry of Education and Science found out last summer, is the following: the subject “Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture” (OPC) is studied in at least every second subject of the Russian Federation. In approximately every tenth, the number of students exceeds ten thousand. In every fifth region, this figure ranges from one thousand to ten thousand schoolchildren. In the summer of 2006, two regions - Belgorod and Bryansk - announced the decision to make the subject compulsory from the new school year. Moreover, the Belgorod residents carried out the decision by regional law. Almost 12 years have passed since the appearance of the defense industrial complex in secondary schools: the founder here was the former Metropolitan of Kursk and Rylsk Yuvenaly (Tarasov), who managed to convince the former governor of the Kursk region Alexander Rutsky that Orthodoxy is not only a religion, but also an ideology that “cements” state and nation. As a result, in December 1996, a decree “On the approval of the program for the study of Orthodox culture in the Kursk region” appeared, signed by Rutsky, from which the spread of the initiative began [1] .

The Belgorod event caused a storm of indignation in the press and seemed completely unexpected to many, but if we build a conspiracy theory about what was happening, then we can assume that it was provoked by the planned publication of the textbook “Religions of the World” - a religious studies manual that was prepared on the initiative of the Ministry of Education and Science by a group of authors under the leadership of Academician A. O. Chubaryan.

The ministry stood for studying in school the understandable history of religions, and not the mysterious “cultural foundations”, which never acquired clear outlines - primarily due to the fact that among the supporters of the defense industrial complex no one particularly sought to clearly define the subject area of ​​the propaganda discipline (sober reflections on this topic were voiced even at the last Christmas readings, an educational conference annually organized by the Moscow Patriarchate).

In the Moscow Patriarchate, the idea of ​​an academic textbook was met with hostility from the very beginning, arguing that the study of different religious traditions would create confusion in the minds of schoolchildren and, at a minimum, would not at all contribute to moral education, which, according to many years of assurances from church leaders, is aimed at Orthodox culture course. In any case, it was clear that both history and the “fundamentals” could not be squeezed into the school curriculum together, so the leaders of the regions where the government and church elites had long-standing cooperation in the educational sphere (in particular, the Belgorod region, along with the Kursk region, were pioneers in the matter teaching defense industry) seem to have decided to take the lead.

The central government did not make any sudden movements then. Human rights activists who demanded to cancel the illegitimate decision were given an explanation that only the Belgorod Duma itself, which adopted the corresponding regional law, has the right to cancel it [2] . However, the Minister of Education and Science Andrei Fursenko appealed to the Public Chamber with a request to issue its competent opinion on the issue. Which was done, and the Public Chamber finally called a spade a spade. “Fundamentals of Orthodox culture,” it was said in the verdict of social activists, is a discipline based on a religious worldview, and it is this worldview that it brings to students. Therefore, it cannot be compulsory in a state school: in our country, as you know, according to the Constitution, the church is separated from the state. The Belgorod residents, however, were not particularly impressed by the verdict of the Public Chamber: the law remained in force, but the agitated public was informed that parents who are opposed to compulsory OPK lessons could refuse them.

The regional education department, however, was forced to look at the situation more closely and as a result found out several very interesting things [3] . For example, that about a third of parents knew nothing about the introduction of a new subject, that, as usual, the “cultural orientation” of the defense education complex causes considerable bewilderment and confidence in many that under this name hides the ordinary Law of God, and most importantly, that the regional institute for advanced training prepared There are somewhere around seven hundred teachers of the new subject, and 2,280 teachers teach it in schools. This meant that the lion's share of teachers did not have the necessary training, although very often training in advanced training courses could not be considered such. I don’t know how things are in the Belgorod region (in some courses teachers are trained for a year or two), but often the entire study is completed in three months - and the corresponding “qualification” is acquired.

It is possible that it was the complete confusion with personnel that pushed the Ministry of Education to the speedy adoption of a law on a unified federal state educational standard. The law, which was supposed to come into force on January 1 of this year, abolished the division of standards into components - federal, regional and school, thereby depriving the defense industry of its usual base: in most schools, the subject is inserted into the clock grid precisely as a regional (or school) component. True, Deputy Director of the Department of State Policy and Legal Regulation of the Ministry of Education and Science Tatyana Petrova in her interview with Interfax argued that the new state standard does not threaten any infringements and simply establishes the minimum that is necessary to obtain accreditation and the right to issue state documents. “And everything that is above this minimum,” she said, “will be formed locally” [4] . The freedom of the regions, she said, “will only increase”: they will have the opportunity to fill up to one-third of their teaching time in accordance with their characteristics. It is still too early to talk about the consequences of the innovation, but Orthodox activists perceived the new law as an openly unfriendly action on the part of the authorities.

The Ministry of Education and Science, however, has demonstrated some willingness to compromise. In the summer of 2007, the department developed a “Model agreement on cooperation between the educational management body of a constituent entity of the Russian Federation and a centralized religious organization,” which was sent to all its regional branches. The agreement, endorsed by the Russian Orthodox Church by the head of the affairs of the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan Clement, was supposed to at least partially compensate for the activities of the Coordination Council for Cooperation between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Ministry of Education, which was closed by the new minister and many times mourned by the patriarchy. “We are for all issues to be discussed professionally, publicly, openly and not give rise to any speculation. Just don’t demonize each other, don’t imagine that there’s definitely an enemy sitting opposite you,” Tatyana Petrova said in the same interview with Interfax [5] . After the sensational letter from 10 academicians to the president, in which they expressed concern about the growing clericalization of society, this was a serious step forward.

However, the hopes of the Russian Orthodox Church that in a little more time, and the authorities would make the subject of military-industrial complex compulsory, were thoroughly shaken, if not completely collapsed. President Vladimir Putin added fuel to the fire by unequivocally declaring in September 2007 at a meeting of the Council for the Implementation of Priority National Projects and Demographic Policy that religious education in schools can only be optional. “...If someone thinks that now we need to act differently, differently, then we need to change the Constitution,” Putin said, adding: “I don’t think that we should be doing this now” [6] . It is symbolic that the meeting of the council took place not just anywhere, but in Belgorod.

But the Patriarchate was absolutely not ready to give up their positions without a fight. A supposedly new, but in fact slightly updated old concept was immediately born, called “Spiritual and moral culture” (in common parlance DNA). This is a whole new area of ​​knowledge that the church proposes to include in the second generation of state standards for schools. This time, “secular church specialists” offer a variable course, rather than the usual OPK: someone chooses Orthodoxy (“Orthodox culture”), someone Islam (or another faith, but nothing less than “traditional”), someone secular ethics... True, this is where voluntariness practically ends; it will be possible to remain completely without “spiritual and moral culture” only in “exceptional cases”, when parents express a “written refusal to study any educational subjects by their children” of this kind, and the school will be able to organize for them at this time classes according to an individual plan or other educational courses of their choice, “preferably social and humanitarian.” Otherwise, the concept allocates two hours per week to DNA throughout the school years. The creators of the concept consider it advisable to allow students from the age of 18 to independently choose the subject of a “spiritual and moral” course and generally decide whether to attend it or not; until then, expression of will remains the prerogative of parents.

The developers propose to study, within the framework of “Orthodox Culture,” the history of the Church, the foundations of morality, Orthodox art, the lives of saints, the Church Slavonic language, church singing, the Orthodox calendar, etc. - on the basis of existing manuals (thus, let me remind you, those that have not passed the examination of the Ministry of Education) or those that may be created in the future.

Among other things, the concept contains the following provisions:

“Candidates for teachers in academic subjects of religious culture are determined subject to: I) the teacher’s consent to teach this academic subject; 2) he has the pedagogical qualifications necessary for admission to work as a teacher in a general education institution; 3) the presence of a recommendation from the relevant religious organization, with which the state federal or regional educational authority (taking into account their competence) has concluded agreements on the content and procedure for processing such a recommendation” [7] .

The most interesting here, in my opinion, is point 3. Suppose the regional Ministry of Education, for some reason, did not enter into an agreement on “the content and procedure for issuing such a recommendation,” say, with traditional Buddhists or Jews. Or with Muslims, who, unlike rare Buddhists and Jews, who, as a rule, are not eager to religiously instruct children in secondary schools, live in other places quite compactly and are not averse to teaching children the “Fundamentals of Islam”. Meanwhile, educational authorities (if we do not take the Caucasian republics and Tatarstan) are not eager to conclude any agreements with them. And if there is no agreement, there is no recommendation, and therefore there is no teacher.

Or another situation. The school found a teacher for “Orthodox Culture”; he may have once taught defense education there and they were quite happy with him. But the local diocese has another candidate, much more beautiful, in the opinion of the ruling bishop. Therefore, they do not give recommendations to the old teacher, but demand to hire a new one. And a secular school, we note, in choosing a teacher turns out to be dependent on the “relevant religious organization.”

What is this if not the same clericalization, the danger of which academicians wrote about? After all, as representatives of the patriarchy themselves have repeatedly emphasized, clericalization is not when religious subjects are taught in a secular school, but when the church has leverage over the school. In this design, these levers are evident. Point 3 would have some justification if “Orthodox culture” were taught at school by priests. But if this is a properly qualified historian or philologist - why on earth?

However, it is still unclear to what extent the state is ready to take advantage of the developments of the church concept. All proposals for a new generation of state standards have been submitted to the Russian Academy of Education, which is engaged in their reduction and generalization. From an interview with the Daily Journal with the scientific director of the team of developers of the second generation federal state educational standard, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Education, Alexander Kondakov, we can conclude that religious disciplines will most likely remain strictly optional in school, and the tasks of moral education will be solved mainly through teaching subjects such as history, literature, native language, etc., through a system of extracurricular activities. “You and I are unlikely to remember such a subject as “the foundations of Marxist-Leninist morality and ethics” in the Soviet school,” he said [8] . But who would dare to say that schoolchildren were bypassed by this very morality?

“The discussion of the concept of new educational standards at the Russian Academy of Education took place without taking into account the proposals of the Russian Orthodox Church; it was decided to refine the concept,” the Interfax correspondent confirmed [9] . The leaders of the Patriarchate, apparently, had a presentiment of this development of events, and this forced them to speak bluntly about their true goals and intentions. The notorious “cultural studies” have been set aside, and at the Christmas readings held in January-February, Metropolitan Kliment of Kaluga and Borovsk directly stated that the school should “first of all educate a child as a bearer of the image of God” [10] . The Church now claims to influence school education as a whole, filling it with appropriate value content. The old talk that all traditional religions have a similar “moral code” has been forgotten; Different religions have different religious values, Metropolitan Clement sternly reminded, therefore the history of religions (if anyone still doubted) is a harmful subject, developing in a child “indifference to issues of spiritual life and moral relativism.” That is, the formulation “from the position of religious organizations and with the participation of religious organizations”, which has been carefully disguised all these years, comes to the fore.

The new formulation of the question is good because it is absolutely unambiguous, but bad because it drives the problem into yet another dead end. Firstly, the Constitution has not gone away, and religious disciplines in schools are legally possible only on a voluntary basis, which, as many years of experience have shown, the church authorities are not at all happy with. Secondly, the “basics” are still taught in schools by secular teachers who are not solid in the subject (and the subject is very vague), but at this stage, as we see from the Belgorod example, there is already at least a fair number of them. Now the subject is becoming clearer, but where can we find the strength to teach it?

There is almost no hope for seminary graduates who will soon receive state-issued diplomas - their number is insignificant (at most 1,500 people a year, the church itself is not enough), and a teaching career does not attract them: the priest in the parish earns much more than any teacher. The Patriarchate places emphasis on graduates of theological faculties of secular universities, but they, as a rule, are not eager to go to school - besides, according to the testimony of the “theologians” themselves, there are very few seriously motivated people among them; the majority enter theological faculties simply because they are not were able to score a passing grade in other places. Is it good to make teachers of the law out of such people?

There is only one way out - to involve the same school teachers in the matter, and the new formulation is already being carefully introduced into the consciousness of the teaching masses. If before from teachers of the military-industrial complex at Christmas readings I heard mainly calls for some kind of abstract morality and the description of the subject in their mouths was some kind of compilation of moral maxims, patriotic slogans and scraps of catechism, now more and more often the conversation begins with the phrase “I as a deeply Orthodox person...", and they associate the teaching of youth with Orthodoxy. “If we are with God and with the concept of sin, then this is one thing, but decency without God can very soon become dull,” Tatyana Yakovlevna, a teacher at the Samara mathematics school, shared with me this time.

In this situation, the previous stubborn reluctance of the Ministry of Education and Science to get involved in the creation of manuals on Orthodox culture seems to me deeply erroneous. The ministry thus completely and completely places teachers at the mercy of the patriarchal bureaucracy, which obviously puts its corporate interests above all concerns about moral education, striving at all costs to penetrate the system of secular education. And teachers have nowhere to go: if at first the defense industry complex, in addition to the patriarchy, was actively promoted mainly by themselves - some in search of solid ground under their feet, some in search of additional income - and even Orthodox activists, now we can already talk about a formed public demand.

Large-scale sociological studies conducted during the 90s within the framework of the international project “Religion and Values ​​after the Fall of Communism” showed that 42% of respondents support teaching the science of religion, 13% are in favor of teaching Orthodoxy, 10% are in favor of teaching religion in parents' choice, and 15% are against any religion at school. A detailed survey by the Public Opinion Foundation in 2004 (100 settlements, 44 regions, territories and republics of Russia, 1,500 respondents) showed that 59% of respondents already have a positive attitude towards teaching military-industrial complex (14% negative). There were still more supporters of the history of religion - 63% (opponents - 14%), but the difference was significantly reduced. The inequality of the wording is somewhat confusing: in the first case, “Orthodoxy”, in the second, OPK, which is still perceived by many not quite as Orthodoxy, in any case, as an adapted Orthodoxy, but different sociologists formulate their questions differently, and there is complete coincidence here there is no hope. For example, the Levada Center also provides data that in 2007, 45% were in favor of teaching the fundamentals of religion and the Law of God, with 41% against. The only thing that all sociological studies agree on is that parents support optional, rather than compulsory, teaching of religious disciplines in all their varieties. According to the FOM, 54% of respondents were in favor of optional OPK lessons (22% were in favor of compulsory ones); for the optional history of religions - 61% (for the compulsory one - 21%). It is also important that the majority of parents want their children to be given a choice: 12% vote for teaching only the history of religion in school, 8% vote for teaching only the military-industrial complex, while 54% vote for both (FOM data).

Apparently, in conditions of extreme inconsistency in the ideological discourse of power, a certain, albeit archaic, albeit also quite contradictory, but primordial model of values ​​(call it the military-industrial complex, DNA, Orthodoxy, or whatever else you like) seems to a considerable number of people to be the only point of support. It’s not for nothing that the teaching of all kinds of “OPK” is not being curtailed, but is only spreading, albeit chaotically (according to my observations at the Christmas readings, which attract OPK teachers from all over the country, there are very few places where the subject is taught consistently and for a long time: in most regions it’s like a wave - it’s surging , covered, but subsided after a year or two).

However, there were still no good textbooks. Yes, the team under the leadership of A. O. Chubaryan created a quite worthy manual, but it is too tough for most teachers (besides, the subject is often taught in elementary school, and the manual is designed for grades 10-11). For them, Alla Borodina’s textbook (updated version), which is used in many regions, is difficult. “We are only taking a few things, not thoroughly,” a teacher from a rural school in the Nizhny Novgorod region admitted to me, “the textbook is quite deep, complex, and we are taking our first steps.”

Perhaps the Ministry of Education does not consider it their responsibility to create teaching aids in disciplines, the appropriateness of which the department continues to doubt, but the subject is taught, and its teaching is only expanding, so wouldn’t it be wiser to make this process as transparent and meaningful as possible? Maybe the ministry should seize the initiative from the church and finally take into its own hands the organization of cooperation, yes, the parties are not yet very interested in cooperation, each of which is openly trying to pull the blanket over themselves. After all, the educational department has more power and financial resources. Let all kinds of “religions” remain strictly optional at school, but isn’t it better that even in such classes children receive knowledge, and not a clichéd set of superstitions or the first skills of xenophobic rhetoric? After all, not even the worst manual on “Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture”, published in Smolensk (2004), considers all non-Orthodox Christian churches (Catholics, Baptists, Pentecostals, Adventists, etc.) as “sectarians”.

However, trying to put a barrier to church claims to a secular school, officials of the Ministry of Education and Science, apparently, see their main task as a compromise with the leaders of the patriarchy, not always being able to discern the needs of society itself behind their offensive actions.