Yesterday, the conservative party in Austria introduced a draft for a change in school law. They are proposing that all pupils should attend either religion or ethics class.

Up til now, the regulation is that there are catholic, protestant and to a lesser extent jewish and muslim religion lessons in schools and you attend them related to your religion. If you don’t have a denomination, you may attend (default setting is not to attend but a lot of people choose to join the catholic religion classes) but you don’t have to. Also, all religious students can choose not to attend the religion classes (if and when their parents agree).
There have been pilot projects in schools with ethics classes, in two versions: as compulsory classes for those who don’t attend religion classes and as an additional possibility to choose from. I myself attended such a school and, as I don’t have a religious denomination, chose the ethics class (I would have probably also chosen it had I been catholic). But I had to attend either one of them.
These projects were only available in the last four years of high school as far as I know.

The bill the conservatives introduced wants the following changes (the reasons as well as the changes are theirs. I don’t want them.):

1. Ethics class should become compulsory for every kid not attending religion class.
   Because attendance of religion class has diminished and kids see it as a great possibility to wander off school grounds and sit in a coffeeshop.
2. Ethics teachers don’t need a special education to be able to teach.
   Because not having this education diminishes the risk of influencing the kids. They would be taught by religion teachers.

My two cents to the whole thing is basically a big “Fuck off”.

I attended ethics class. As my teacher was not educated to teach ethics but someone who studied comparative religion, we talked about religions all the time. Which was very interesting and it’s definitely a thing that should be taught. But it’s not ethics lessons. It was only called that.
Basically, I was forced to attend religion class, my choice was between the focus: either catholic focus or multi-cultural focus. And that pissed me off. My parents did not baptise me for a reason, I did not attend religion class for many reasons (and none of them were so I could spend some time in a coffee shop. Believe me, I’d gladly take a time table with no hours off in between and go to the café afterwards) and I did not get baptised/initiated/whatever myself, nor did I ever ask my parents for it because I’m a fucking atheist.

Now the church thinks it’s great that kids are forced to attend religion classes. (And you can’t tell me that it wouldn’t be religion class with teachers who studied religion.) What a surprise! Instead of wondering what’s going on that people don’t want to go to church anymore (dogmatic much?), they say, “great! force them to learn about the one true way! that will help and we won’t have to change”. School classes will attend mass a couple of times a year, so yay!

I digress. This is not about the church. Because we live in a secular society. Church and state are two different things. Right?
Well, it’s forbidden to hang up crosses in class rooms. That’s about how secular school gets when it comes to religion classes.

I understand that they don’t want to have an extra education for ethics teachers. It’s expensive. In my opinion, you can’t teach ethics, not in the traditional sense. Ethics you pick up along the way, as you see how people live their lives and what ethics and morale influences their lives. Ethics are shaped, not taught.

I’m not saying (because that something you hear very often) that the parents are giving up all their responsibilities, that school nowadays is not only supposed to teach, but also to raise the kids. [I think that’s utter bullshit anyway.] But ethics are shaped more by parents than by teachers because usually kids spend more time with their parents than with their teachers.
The contrary applies here: School wants responsibilities it should not have [or to better phrase it: The conservative party wants school to have those responsibilities]. It’s not their job to teach children what is right and what is wrong, what is ethical and what is moral.

What really pisses me off though is the underlying assumption here: If you are not religious, you need to be thaught what is correct or not in the world. Because obviously your social environment (family etc.) who lets you be a poor heathen can not do that. Therefore, the conservative party steps in to save you from this hostile environment by giving you the lessons you so desperately need. And look, you can even choose if it should be obviously religious or hidden religious.

Anyway, I don’t think that religion classes are obsolete or should be cancelled or should be substituted by ethics classes (hell no!). What I would like to see is religions classes: A class which will probably focus on Christianity, because Christianity just shaped the Austrian understanding of the world, but which teaches about what other religions believe in too. Then you’ll have no need of dividing classes and creating the “oooh  – he’s different! and she too!” feeling those divisions provoke.
Instead you can have one class which knows about all the religions in the world [Ok, let’s be realistic, the biggest religions in the world] and has a basic understanding of the different believe systems. Wouldn’t that be great?