ACCORDING to press reports, the Bishop of Limassol, Athanassios, wants to set up a small shrine in every state school in the Limassol district. He wants students to be able to pray during school hours and to use the chapel for confession, but he did not say whether there would be a priest on stand-by in every school to take confession. This idea, together with a plan for the shrine, is included in a letter the bishop has sent to the Minister of Education seeking his approval. He has also offered to foot the bill for the shrines.
Teaching union bosses have already spoken out against the idea, pointing out that it goes against the notion of religious tolerance. Secondary teachers’ union boss Soteris Charalambous pointed out, quite rightly, that nowadays there are quite a few children attending state schools who are not Greek Orthodox. According to figures issued by the Statistics Department for the year 2000-2001, there were 1,570 non-Cypriots at state primary schools and 1,719 in state secondary schools. This was about three per cent of the state school population, and is a number likely to grow over the next few years.
If anything, the education authorities should be looking to secularise schools, at which religious instruction is dogmatic and denominational, not make them more religious than they already are. Schools should be made more inclusive, welcoming children from all religious backgrounds rather than have practices which exclude anyone whose family does not happen to be Orthodox, which is what the bishop’s plan would achieve. Because the setting up of shrines for Orthodox kids in every school smacks of intolerance and exclusion at a time when the authorities should be working to integrate non-Orthodox children into society.
Gone are the days when 99.99 per cent of state school children belonged to the Greek Orthodox faith and religious instruction was nothing more than an indoctrination course given by dogmatic Orthodox theologians. Cyprus society is becoming more multi-cultural, and the objective of the state schools should be to promote integration and encourage foreign and non-Orthodox children to feel that they are part of this society. Even the teaching of religion should be made broader and more liberal — looking at different faiths and how they are practised — in an attempt to encourage tolerance and acceptance.
This should be the state policy, even if it constitutes a major break with the past. The Church had a large say in education which may have served a useful purpose during the colonial period and during the first years of independence, but today this an anachronism out of step with a changing society that needs to open up. Consulting the Archbishop before appointing an education minister, as former President Glafcos Clerides always did, has no place in modern society: it is educationally and politically indefensible.
The state should be looking at ways to curb the Church’s influence in schools. And if the Church does not approve, it should pay to establish its own school, where it can have as many shrines and confession boxes as it likes and make the children pray all day. Parents who want their children to be indoctrinated can send them to Church schools. But trying to turn state schools into seminaries, as the Limassol bishop wants to do, will take the country back 50 years. And that’s the last thing we need.
