Mandatory lessons of religion or ethics. Ordo Iuris Institute will submit a bill

In connection with the ongoing debate on the organisation of spiritual lessons in public schools, the Ordo Iuris Institute prepared a draft amendment to the Law on the Education System. It introduces compulsory spiritual or ethical education classes. This is justified by the request to supply children and young people with the essential conditions for moral and ethical education in force and acceptable to society.

Last year's changes in the conditions and rules for the organisation of spiritual lessons in public schools and kindergartens violate over 30 years' compromise.

At the same time, these changes limit the chance for young people to make in the spirit of values that society believes in. To reduce the number of weekly spiritual hours, to combine classes between yearbooks causing gaps in spiritual education or to neglect to adapt content to the student's age, not to include a spiritual grade in average ratings, or yet to order spiritual lessons to be placed before or after classes held at school, is aimed at reducing budget spending for classes incompatible with the worldview of the management of the Ministry of National Education and discouraging students to attend classes introducing universal values to the planet of Western civilization.

In combination with the introduction of compulsory sex education as part of a fresh subject wellness education, the activities of the Minister of Education appear to be experimental social engineering performed on a young generation. In the face of the threat of raising generations of Polish youth not in accordance with the values passed on to them in their homes, harmful changes must be reversed, providing statutory guarantees for a model of teaching religion and ethics in accordance with the Constitution of Poland.

The current regulations do not supply for compulsory educational activities of religion and ethics. These issues are regulated mainly at the level of the basic act, i.e. the Regulation of 14 April 1992 on the conditions and manner of organising religion in public kindergartens and schools.

The Ordo Iuris Institute task is not revolutionary, as the proposed legal standards apply in the Polish legal system. The main substantive changes are to include them in the bill and to presume that religion and ethics are compulsory educational activities to choose from. In this respect, Article 42a(1) is designed, according to which pre-schools, primary schools, general schools, method schools, sector-specific first-cycle schools, sector-specific second-cycle schools, work-based peculiar schools and art schools providing general education, with the exception of adult schools, organize compulsory spiritual or ethics classes of 2 hours a week. As for the weekly dimension of spiritual lessons, nothing will change – it will inactive be 2 hours a week unless the average of the place decides to reduce the dimension to 1 hr a week. In ethics, the weekly number of classes was adapted to the hourly dimension of spiritual lessons.

The Constitution of the Republic of Poland of 2 April 1997 in Article 53(2) and (4) provides churches and another spiritual unions with a regulated legal situation, the right to teach religion in schools. The teaching of religion, as the Constitutional Court recalls, is simply a right arising from the freedom of religion, from the anticipation to express its religion in this way; it is simply a right guaranteed in Article 53, in peculiar in paragraphs 2 and 3 (the Constitutional Tribunal judgement of 2 December 2009, act No U 10/07). The accepted guarantees in the Constitution of the Republic of Poland on spiritual expression are the highest protection against restrictions and prevent the expression of religion by the powerholders. 1 form of freedom of religion is the anticipation of conducting spiritual classes in schools.

At this point it should be stressed that according to the figures presented by the Central Statistical Office for 2021, the number of Catholics in Poland was 92.2% of the population (Religious Confessions in Poland in 2019-2021, GUS, Warsaw 2022). These figures clearly indicate that the number of believers of the Catholic Church is dominant towards another denominations. Thus fundamental, constitutionally guaranteed, the right of the Catholic Church and another churches and spiritual unions to a regulated legal situation to teach religion in schools should not be questioned in the Polish public space. This law is indisputable.

It is besides clear that any changes in the principles of the teaching of religion in schools without the consent of the churches and another spiritual associations afraid about the regulated legal situation are an effort to violate the principles of cooperation and autonomy developed between them. In view of the above, the proposed bill constitutes a comprehensive and compromise regulation of the organisation of spiritual lessons in schools, both public and private.

Today, society as a whole, and especially believers, are forced to pass an examination of the clear and assertive expression of their belief that “we want God in a book, in school” and only this direction of change, while maintaining freedom of conscience and religion, is socially acceptable. Not a step backwards on the subject of pilfering believers from their rights – including the right to teach religion at school. Only specified support will give spiritual communities an argument to courageously put expectations in talks with government representatives. Conversations that can find spiritual education not only of our children, but besides of our grandchildren.

Source: Dr. Łukasz Bernacinski / Ordo Iuris Institute

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