Education Ministry: Civic Education course was introduced at teachers’ suggestion

The Civic Education course was introduced as obligatory subject for the first-twelfth grades from this year at the suggestion of the teachers. The recommendations were made at methodological conferences, the departing Minister of Education and Youth Larisa Savga said. “Until present, this course was taught starting with the fifth grade. We acknowledged the need to make it a mandatory subject for all the grades,” Larisa Savga told the reporters, without mentioning the motives for such a decision or the projected results. During a radio program, Ana Gutu, first deputy director of the Free International University of Moldova, said that the introduction of the Civic Education course in schools is not a bad decision in principle, but there is needed an appropriate curriculum. A number of teachers said that the sterile and ideological slogans do not reach the students’ hearts. As to the Moral-Spiritual Education course, Larisa Savga said that it will be taught in continuation as optional subject in the first-fourth grades, according to the scientific and religious conceptions. She stressed that the number of lessons on this subject wasn’t reduced, as it is insinuated. The minister also said that the school program will be reviewed until the start of the 2010 – 2011 school year. Christian organizations asked the Ministry of Education and Youth to add Christian-Orthodox teachings to the Civic Education course and to formulate a clear and encouraging policy for teaching the Christian-Orthodox Education subject. In a news conference earlier, teacher of religion Ghenadie Valuta, who heads the Pro Ortodoxia Association, said that though the Civic Education course is intended to be moralizing, it does not contain the Christian-Orthodox morals.