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Schools in Poland must offer students religion lessons. Officially, it is not about anything specific, but because the curricula and teachers (often monks or nuns) are chosen by the Catholic Church to teach the Catholic catechism.
Lessons covered by the state are not required, but most students still choose them; it is true that the indicators are changing rapidly, and certainly not in favor of the Church.
More and more Poles are angry that, say, in eight years of elementary school, students hear about religion and Catholicism much more than about chemistry, geography, biology, or physics.
Polls show that the general public would like the work of catechists in schools to be funded by the Church itself.
The current situation, according to the Swiecka Szkola (Secular School) initiative, is scandalous. The organization approached all Polish counties and municipalities with the question of how much money is spent there on the salaries of catechists.
Polls show that the general public would like the work of catechists in schools to be funded by the Church itself.
According to Gazeta Wyborcza, the responses showed that in 2019-2020. about 1.1 billion were paid to religion teachers during the school year. zlotys. Swiecka Szkola has also published a virtual map with exact amounts.
Yes, some professors who teach religion also talk to students about, let’s say, ethics. But 1.1 billion. the amount of zlotys probably does not reflect the total cost of religious education, as other provincial authorities also add funds for this purpose.
As early as 2018, the Ministry of Education announced that public schools would employ nearly 22,000 people. catechists. The daily Rzeczpospolita then estimated that together these teachers earned almost 1,500 million a year. zlotys.
“People don’t know how much money is being spent on such things,” says Piotr Pawlowski, founder of Swiecka Szkola. – They are surprised to know how much money is being given to the Church. I wanted to fuel the debate. “
Reuters / Photo by Scanpix / in the Church of Poland
Paullowski does not hide the fact that the “sole purpose” of his organization is “to remove religion from schools that are not a place for religion that is not a place to mix science with faith.”
Clearly, at a time when a highly conservative coalition led by the Law and Justice Party is in power, there is little chance of anything being accomplished. The rulers actively support the Catholic Church and argue that it should play a central role in the life of society.
Education Minister Przemyslaw Czarnek recently stated that Christian education “is necessary to save Latin civilization.”
He also recently pointed out that children who do not take religious lessons must learn ethics. As if it were on purpose, the new ethics professors are trained mainly by Catholic universities. Official figures show that about 90 percent consider themselves Catholic. Polish.
The Left (Lewica), the second largest opposition group in parliament, is demanding that religious and catechism lessons in schools be suspended. And the new centrist party, Polska 2050, is calling for the Church to stop controlling which teachers are hired and which curricula are selected.
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