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Ukraine Education Minister & Churches Discuss Youth Education
18-07-2008
18.07.2008, [16:53] // Church-state relations //
Ukraine Education Minister & Churches Discuss Youth EducationKyiv- Ukrainian Minister of Education Ivan Vakarchuk met with representatives of the country's Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant churches on 17 July 2008 in Kyiv. According to the press office of the Christian-Democratic Union, Vakarchuk emphasized the importance of the education of children and youth and how the churches and the state can work on this together.
The continuation of spiritual and moral courses in government-run schools was discussed, as was the possibility of cooperating with religious institutions in preparing teachers for such courses and state recognition of the diplomas awarded by educational institutions run by religious organizations.
Participants of the meeting noted that there is a lack of consistency in implementing spiritual and moral courses in schools. For example, according to official information from the Ministry of Education publicized at the meeting, today in eastern Ukraine's Luhansk Region no schools have any subject taught with a spiritual or moral orientation, while in far western Ukraine's Lviv Region 323,000 school students study such subjects. It was also noted that the crime rate in eastern Ukraine is substantially higher than in the western part of the country.
Patriarch Filaret (Denysenko), head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyivan Patriarchate, focused attention on the moral crisis in Europe and the loss of a correct understanding of the family that he said is leading to a demographic crisis. He thanked the Ministry of Education for the steps it has taken to introduce spiritual and moral subjects into state-run schools.
Patriarch Lubomyr (Husar), head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, noted the need to take into account the multi-religious state of Ukrainian society in discussing the question of moral and spiritual education, and he also called for a more careful approach to studying foreign experience in the area, warning against copying it blindly.
The meeting ended with the approval of various resolutions, including a recommendation to local boards of education to become more active in introducing the teaching of spiritual and moral courses into their curricula and preparing teachers for such courses in cooperation with institutions like the Ukrainian Catholic University and the National University of the Ostroh Academy.
In his closing words. Vakarchuk noted that the meeting had set a serious task before the participants: "We are responsible for the future of our children. And they will be that which we raise them to be."
