Conference paper
Religion, School and Society. Elements for a necessary innovation in the training of RE Teachers in Europe
Bert Roebben
; Institut für Katholische Theologie, Fakultät Humanwissenschaften und Theologie, Technische Universität Dortmund
Abstract
Social cohesion implies the discussion about whatever concerns men directly: vital expectations, fundamental values and senses directions. The places par excellence to acquire this communicative competence are School, as a ‘microcosm’ in our complex and pluralised societies, and the Religious Education class, in its typical European arrangement – within state schools. In this essay I maintain that children and young people not only have to be taught how they can live and learn from one another, but they also have the fundamental right to acquire the competence of seizing and laying the foundations of their own religious and non-religious position. Without this personal dignity and resilience (to think and believe in society) there would not be any appropriate discussion. Discussion presupposes each one’s otherness. Modern school can offer an open field to know - self and others’- religion better in this relationship, and to defend it reasonably and independently. For this reason, modern training for Religious Education teachers should foster, not only the socio-communicative and objective-heuristic competence, but also and, above all, the personal-existential competence of the teacher-to-be. This triple relationship means innovation for the development of Europe as an educational area. This issue will be developed below in four steps: Religion within the School educational mission, the religious mother tongues at School, the relationships of the religious differences at School and, therefore, innovation in the training of RE teachers.
Keywords
Religious Education; Interreligious Education; Teacher Training in Religion
Hrčak ID:
111729
URI
Publication date:
24.6.2012.
Visits: 1.139 *