The children who are of other denominations than Orthodox ones are discriminated in the Moldovan schools, Mihaela Ajder, director of the Information Center for Human Rights, said in the program “Moldova live” on the public TV channel Moldova 1, IPN reports.
Mihaela Ajder stated that such a conclusion was reached as a result of a study within which there were monitored 30 schools from 15 districts. “There are symbols of the Orthodox Church in almost every class, including icons and crosses. Orthodox churches are improvised in many schools or there are churches working on the territory of the schools and the children are invited to attend services there. Though the religion classes in schools are optional, the written consent of the parents is absent. Religion classes to representatives of other denominations are taught in none of the 30 schools. The representative of a Protestant cult wasn’t allowed by the school’s administration to teach religion lessons. The moral-spiritual education textbooks for students of the primary school promote Orthodoxy and the children, who at this age do not have the ability to filter out the information, are indoctrinated,” she said.
Ombudsman Tudor Lazar noted that the state education in Moldova is laic and the presence of religious symbols in schools is not justified, regardless of the denomination. He said he is for teaching the history of religions in schools. “The teaching of this subject instead of religion classes will eliminate any kind of discrimination. For the time being, there are two curricula for religion classes, worked out by the Ministry of Education – for Orthodox Christians and for Protestant cults. The representatives of the other cults are thus discriminated,” he stated.
On the other hand, priest Ioan Cosoi, who teaches religion lessons at a number of schools, said he teaches such classes only at the request of the school administration and does not contact parents to convince them to allow their children to attend the religion lessons. “A class is formed when there are at least ten persons who want to take religion lessons. The children attend them voluntarily. The religion lesson is usually the last of the lessons so that those who do not want to attend can go home. There were students of other denominations in some of the classes. They came of their own free will and even stated their viewpoint. But we should not forget that 90% of the country’s population are Orthodox Christians,” stated the priest.
