Nikolai Mitrokhin: “The pedagogical community is intensely resisting the clericalization of secondary education in Russia”

Candidate of Historical Sciences, author of the book “The Russian Orthodox Church: Current State and Current Problems” (Moscow, 2004) Nikolai Mitrokhin commented for the SOVA Center on the refusal of the Public Council under the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation to accept Patriarch Kirill’s proposal to expand the teaching of the course “Fundamentals of Religious” at school cultures and secular ethics."

The position of the teaching community and the Ministry of Education as a whole does not change. The pedagogical community is intensely resisting the clericalization of secondary education in Russia, and this meeting is a clear indicator of this.

The introduction of the fundamentals of Orthodox culture and other religious special courses into the school curriculum from the fourth grade was already a forced decision by President Dmitry Medvedev. He “pushed through” the Minister of Education, imposing the introduction of Orthodox programs, transferring the military-industrial complex and other ideological subjects from the status of experimental, although quite widespread in thousands of schools in Russia, and elective subjects into compulsory elective subjects. If before this, school directors and parents of the child could say that they did not need any of the block of religious subjects, they would prefer to additionally study the same mathematics in their free time, but now it was a question of a mandatory choice between six subjects, of which the most neutral was “ Foundations of world religions".

Time has shown that the teaching community, which did not support such an initiative, was right, since according to fragmentary data, the majority of parents - at least in large cities - choose not “Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture”, but “Fundamentals of World Religions” or “Fundamentals secular ethics." This was stated this time at a meeting of the Public Council, which gathered to respond to Patriarch Kirill’s initiative to expand the teaching of such ideological initiatives to the entire school curriculum.

Thus, we see the manifestation of stable trends on all sides of the conflict, which has existed for almost two decades. On the one hand, there is the persistent desire of the Russian Orthodox Church to expand its influence on the school education system and the formation of the worldview of children and adolescents attending compulsory classes. On the other hand, there is the position of the teaching community and experts, who point out that this subject is not needed by students, their parents, or teachers as a compulsory subject. And the third position is the position of the ministry, which, relying on the opinion of experts, is trying to maintain a balance between public interests, in this case - supporting the concept of a secular school and the limited influence of the Russian Orthodox Church and other religious organizations on the educational system.

For the first time, we saw in news reports a presentation of the actual position of the Public Council. Previously, officials said that they should express a certain state point of view, taking into account the interests of the state, which is not interested in a conflict with the largest Russian religious denomination. Members of the Public Council are not vested with such powers and are not burdened with such obligations, so they can say what they think. As far as I can imagine the position of officials, direct workers of the ministry, their position generally coincides with the position of the Public Council. Another question is what they say and will say in the public space, how exactly they will soften this position. In any case, the fact that information about the opinions of members of the Public Council was announced through the media shows that the ministry does not intend to hide the position of its experts from the public.