Less and less students attend the lesson on this subject. It is a serious handicap if you want to understand the roots of our reality. And the events we are experiencing.
1,164,000 Italian students have decided not to attend religion time Which, as is known, is not mandatory by us. There are 68 thousand children more than the previous year: they were 15.5 percent in 2022-23, they became 16.6 percent in 2023-24. Florence is the most secular city with 51.5 percent, Bologna follow (47.29 percent), Aosta (43.58 percent), Biella (40.62 percent) and gradually up to Trieste (37.94 percent) and Turin (37.67 percent). On the other hand, more than 97 percent of the students of Taranto, Benevento and Barletta are at these lessons. But there is an institute, the Olivetti of Ivrea, which is first with 90.7 percent of children who do not attend religion.
The reasons why this matter is not attended they are the most varied: From those who consider it boring to those who calculate that if it does not make religion an hour before, from those who declare themselves a blasphemer to those who have just finished the Ramadan, from whom because they are a Jehovah’s witness to those who do not frequent because he is a Orthodox Christian, from whom because they are of Tunis to those who believe it a private fact until those who, not being a Catholic, is not interested in that knowledge.
However, what interests us, here, are not so much the aforementioned motivations to not attend religion time, which is however an institution resulting from the arrangement between the state and the Church. Rather, they affect the reasons why this teaching should be changed completely and for which it should be enrolled among the compulsory subjects.
Let’s start with a first general consideration. The school must help the student to have fundamental knowledge To understand the past and present of the world in which he lives. Let’s limit ourselves, for now, to the geopolitical question. Who can understand, without knowing the religions, the conflict in place between Hamas, the Palestinians and the Israelis if he does not know the Islamic and Jewish religion? Who can understand the Russian-Ukrainian conflict if the Christian-Orthodox religion does not know in general lines? And, in particular, who can understand the whole Islamic question, both from a religious point of view and from a political point of view, up to its fundamentalist expressions present and recurring on the international scenario? Who can understand the always present anti -Mionism that, with subsequent and frequent waves, returns to the scene? And so far we are only to national and international geopolitical issues. Without a minimum knowledge of the religions of all this, perhaps 10 percent is understandable.
If then, limiting ourselves to Italy, students must study the history of art, But also Italian literature to a lesser extent, what can they understand about that art without knowing the biblical contents of the Christian tradition? In front of a Nativity of the fifteenth century, a person who does not know Christian culture what can he understand? How the knowledge of the Bible and Catholicism was noticed Eco is deemed appropriate to know an integral part of the historical, cultural and artistic heritage of Italy, this teaching has several confessional contents but the purposes are proper to the school, even of a secular school. Many contest and have criticized the teaching of the Catholic religion in schools, among them the Waldensian table who considers the education and religious training of youth specific skills of families and churches and that a teaching of catechesis or religious doctrine should not be carried out in public schools managed by the State, as happens today.
Returning to art for a moment, and in particular to the Christian and the western sacred one. It is based on models and symbols not knowing which art itself cannot be appreciated. After all, if someone wants to understand the Passion according to San Matteo by Johann Sebastian Bach, he must know what it is. In essence, the knowledge of the Christian religion for Italy, but also for Europe, is an indispensable tool for interpreting the various artistic expressions and cultural heritage of the country.
Just above we talked about making this teaching mandatory and this statement is linked to another belief: that is, that, although the teaching of the Catholic religion, it must be joined to that of other cults.
Today, in fact, much more than in the past, the aforementioned religions influence and determine geopolitics, it is not a battles between Cattolica and other religions. It is an essential matter of teaching in view of the formation of a critical awareness of the students.
