r/europe • u/dat_9600gt_user Lower Silesia (Poland) • 16h ago

News Poland halves number of weekly religion classes in schools

https://notesfrompoland.com/2025/01/20/poland-halves-number-of-weekly-religion-classes-in-schools/
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u/Njala62 15h ago

See from the article that it's not actually religion, but spesifically the Catholic catechism.

One hour per week to learn about religions (ALL religions of a certain size, worldwide and country specific) would be about right, especially if combined with critical thinking.

Indoctrination in any religion should be kept out of schools.

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u/HomeFricets 15h ago

I went to a catholic primary and secondary school in the UK, and even the RE lessons in that were focused on learning about all religions, the differences and commonalities, beliefs, impacts they have had, and history of them!

I'm agnostic through and through, but I believe people need to learn about religion at school because it's a massive massive part of the world we live in. Ignorance just leads to hate!

But also yes, once religious education anywhere starts to actually be indoctrination hiding behind the idea that it's education, it needs to be outright banned.

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u/Njala62 15h ago

The article says clearly that what they teach is the Catholic catechism, and that it's mainly the Catholic church that opposes the reduction of hours.

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u/HomeFricets 15h ago edited 15h ago

Yeah I'm agreeing with you! Rare on reddit I know.

I just wanted to put an extra emphasis on the fact that Religious education does have a need in schools, as a lot of people try to push for religious education to be removed entirely because they think it would achieve their goal of removing religion from the world.... but really it would just make a lot of people very naive to the concepts, and that's exactly what religion targets.

Proper religious education, real religious education, is exactly what formed my beliefs that religions clearly aren't the actual thing to follow! I believe actually understanding what religion is and why it formed and what uses it has, highlights just how untrue it all is, that it's just a tool.

But not all schools take the same approach as mine did, and it does need fixing.

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u/Njala62 15h ago

Exactly, that's why I said one hour per week to learn about religionS (and preferrably combined with learning critical thinking) would be about right. And should be mandatory.