(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
- Even though this is a Christian country, one should learn just as much about all religions, states Micaela Hetland (14).
Ny Tid is visiting class 9B at Hovseter school in Oslo. In today's KRL hour, the government's bill for a new purpose clause is discussed. Based on the criticism from the UN and the ruling in the Human Rights Court in Strasbourg, the government has presented a proposal that entails a religion- and value-neutral purpose clause in kindergarten and school. Thus, the current Christian upbringing obligation will be removed. Despite the fact that the topic is not a syllabus for the students and very few have a "purpose clause" in their vocabulary, the students will get an introduction to the historical event of which they are a part. And there is no shortage of clear opinions.
- In the textbook there are almost 100 pages about Christianity and Jesus, while there are less than 20 pages about Islam. And it says as much about Mary alone as it says about Judaism, says Nicholas Sullivan (14), clearly annoyed by the skewed emphasis.
Micaela Hetland (14) is herself a Christian, but wants the teaching to equate the religions. She also misses a greater breadth in the subject:
- We should learn more about philosophy, ethics and morality. There is far too little of that today.
Students agree that it is important to learn about religions other than Christianity. Not least because the alternative is that you get to know others through the extreme elements. As a student, it says, "if we don't learn it here, we will only learn what we see on television about suicide bombers." Mohamed Hassan (15) agrees, but adds a caveat:
- It does not hurt that there is a little more about Christianity than other religions, as Norway is a Christian country.
Human rights violations
The debate about religious education took off in earnest in 1997 when the subjects "Christian knowledge" and "philosophy of life" were replaced by KRL (Christian knowledge with religion and philosophy of life).orientering). The compulsory subject should be objective enough to remove the need to divide the students into separate teaching. But the curriculum was met with protests, especially from humanists and non-Christians who believed that parts of the teaching were preaching. Although it was possible with partial exemption from the training, there were many who claimed that this worked poorly in practice.
To get full exemption, the state was sued by several families. They lost in the Supreme Court, and appealed the case to the UN Human Rights Committee. Together with the Human-Ethical Federation, the case was also reported to the European Court of Human Rights. In 2004, the response came from the UN where Norway was criticized for violating human rights. As a result, the curriculum in the subject was changed in 2005. Among other things, the subject name was changed to the current "Christianity, Religion and Life Vision Knowledge".
Not the school's task
Last year, the verdict of the European Court of Human Rights fell. The KRL subject was in violation of human rights. Although the judgment applied to the old KRL variant of 97, it contained references to the current Christian Purpose Paragraph of the Education Act. Among other things, he says that "the primary school, in collaboration and understanding with the world, will help give the students a Christian and moral attitude."
The government's proposal is historical in that it can for the first time be determined by law that education in Christian faith is not the school's task. Instead, education should be based on basic values as expressed in "Christian and humanist traditions and in various religions and beliefs and as rooted in human rights." The new name of the subject is "Religion, beliefs and ethics".
Njål The autumn survey at the Norwegian Center for Human Rights has looked forward to a change. He has been following the KRL case since the first lawsuit and believes a change in law will be of great importance.
- This law says how the school should be, and what place we believe religion should have in society.
He nevertheless believes that Norway has not been cleansed of human rights criticism:
- The change makes it better, but not perfect. We still have Section 2 of the Constitution which must be amended.
