Psychologies Magazine, February 2002 —
Will a specific course on the history of religions be introduced in public schools? Jack Lang, the Minister of National Education, has just entrusted Régis Debray with a mission to reflect on this delicate question. The former revolutionary, a staunch secularist and republican, has already stated his support for it. On this point, I entirely agree with him. Religions are a major cultural phenomenon in the history of humanity. A considerable part of our artistic, linguistic, intellectual, and historical heritage is incomprehensible without this knowledge. A few years ago, Télérama published a survey revealing a profound amnesia among young people on this subject. To the question, "What is the Trinity?", most
answered, "A metro station!" I would go further: religious doctrines played an essential role in the intellectual debates of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. The history of ideas throughout the world is impenetrable to those who know nothing about major religious themes.
It is also worth remembering, as recent events have sadly illustrated, that religion continues to play a central role in many parts of the world. Knowledge of religions is essential for a proper understanding of the world, history, and cultures. What exactly does this entail? It is not about teaching a kind of catechism like in private religious schools. No one is considering asking priests, rabbis, or imams to come and indoctrinate the students of the Republic! It would involve either adapting history curricula to give more prominence to the study of comparative religions than they already do, or teaching the history of religions as a subject in its own right, on par with philosophy.
The first solution is obviously simpler to implement. However, it risks being unsatisfactory, as history teachers have not received any appropriate training, and it is difficult to see how information of such complexity can be integrated without adequate training. The second scenario addresses this problem but also has a major drawback: it would require creating a CAPES (competitive examination for secondary school teachers) and an agrégation (competitive examination for university teaching positions) in the history of religions, something that the attitudes within the teaching profession and the Ministry of National Education do not seem ready for.
Yet, those who, in the name of secularism, refuse specific religious education in secular schools are living in the wrong century. The battles between clerics and anticlerics are no longer relevant. I would even say that an objective and detached understanding of religions will awaken in children a critical spirit that will allow them to fight with discernment against all forms of obscurantism or fundamentalism. Religious institutions have more to fear from such education than the Republic itself!
February 2002