A Historical Perspective on the Interaction of Russian Religious Culture and School Education

1. Entity type Lemma
2. Original titleИсторический опыт взаимодействия русской религиозной культуры и школьного образования в России
3. Language term Russian
4. lemma author Asliturk, Miriam
5. lemma category Ecumenism and dialogue > Education - Culture and national identities
6. Publication date 07-07-2018
7. lemma work Марсадолова, Татьяна Леонидовна [Author]. Исторический опыт взаимодействия русской религиозной культуры и школьного образования в России
8. lemma manifestations Общество. Среда. Развитие (Terra Humana)
9. Keywords nationalism - Secondary education - Russian Orthodoxy - religious education - atheism - cultural identity - Russian Orthodox Church - Schools - history of Russian education
10. Url Click Here
11. Citations
    1. <p>Марсадолова, Татьяна Леонидовна (2010). Исторический опыт взаимодействия русской религиозной культуры и школьного образования в России. <em>Общество. Среда. Развитие (Terra Humana), (</em>1), 43-45. Retrieved from: <a href="https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/istoricheskiy-opyt-vzaimodeystviya-russkoy-religioznoy-kultury-i-shkolnogo-obrazovaniya-v-rossii">https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/istoricheskiy-opyt-vzaimodeystviya-russkoy-religioznoy-kultury-i-shkolnogo-obrazovaniya-v-rossii</a> </p>
12. Lemma body

    1. The article deals with the debate in Russian society concerning the inclusion of religious studies into the secondary school curriculum. The opinions are represented by three major trends: atheist (highlighting the incompatibility of education and religious culture), religious (arguing that education and upbringing should be religious) and civic (regarding religious phenomena as part of a common culture and the source of spiritual and moral development of the individual). The author supports the latter approach. Without knowledge of Russian Orthodox culture as the source of universal and national values, it is impossible to raise a citizen of Russia: the universal determines the civic position of the individual given the multiethnic nature of the country, and the national - the correct self-identification in this kaleidoscope of values.

       Thus since April 2010, the curricula of grades (four and five) have introduced a new subject: "The Basics of Religious Cultures and Secular Ethics." It includes a choice of modules: the fundamentals of Orthodox culture, the foundations of Islamic culture, the foundations of Buddhist culture, the foundations of Judaic culture, the foundations of world religious cultures, and the foundations of secular ethics. In this way Russia resumed the pre-revolutionary tradition in education, which since the Christianisation of Russia was characterised by a close connection between school education with the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church.

       The first Russian schools were monastic. Greek (Byzantine) monks taught in them until Prince Vladimir (the Baptist) established schools for the preparation of priests. In 1030, Yaroslav the Wise opened in Novgorod a school for the children of priests. At the same time the Kiev-Pechersky monastery started giving not only religious but also secular education and created a library. As in European medieval schools, the religious content of instruction in Russian schools, was then dominated secular subjects. The Mongol-Tatar invasion and the following centuries of yoke had a detrimental effect on the educational culture of Medieval Russia. Educational activities would be seriously resumed only in the 16^th century when Tsar Ivan IV (the Terrible) established a printing house and a religious school based “on the Latin model.” It appears that the educational methods of the school were borrowed from Western Europe, while the religious content of education was Orthodox. At the same time in Southern Russia, Orthodox churches organized "fraternal" schools, which followed the model of the Jesuit collegiums but were Orthodox in curriculum.

       Since 1589 the history of cultural ties between Orthodoxy and education changed considerably. Religious education in the late 16^th - early 17^th century entered higher education. The teaching became dominated by scholastic philosophy, which served to justify and prove Orthodox dogmas. Aristotle’s philosophy became widely used and religious establishments in Russia came to represent “a spiritual fusion of Western European rationalism” with “Old Russian book wisdom.”