Basarabian Church providing schools with religion textbooks

Since September 1, when Religion began to be taught in schools, the Metropolitan Church of Basarabia provided schools with 50,000 textbooks for 1st-4th grades. Another 20,000 will be available soon. Metropolitan priests say that thanks to this investment, pupils will be able to properly study Religion, Info-Prim Neo reports. Ioan Cosoi, Metropolitan secretary and spokesman, said at a press conference this was a great success of the Church. “The Metropolitan Church of Basarabia did its utmost for this subject to be taught since September 1, 2010, in schools. The first year, it was only an introductory course, but the next year we’ll have a full curriculum for each grade”, he said. Priests of the Metropolitan Church of Basarabia worked on 30 subjects to be included in the curriculum beginning on September 1. According to Sergiu Aga, Metropolitan mass media and cultural councilor, the Church and the Ministry of Education cooperated in elaborating a strategy of professional training for teachers of religion. Sergiu Aga mentioned that in the first year of teaching Religion, there were many requests from parents whose children will study Religion. “The development in the first year is encouraging. 83,000 out of 400,000 children, or 23%, a considerable figure, study this subject”, the councilor said. However, besides success, the Metropolitan Church observed problems as well. “Some school principles didn’t promote Religion, but after the offering of textbooks, turned friendlier”, remarked Aga. There were some organization issues in education departments that didn’t prepare trainers to hold seminars for Religion teachers. Religion is taught since September 1, 2010 in about 700 of 4000 schools.