RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN UNDERGRADUATE TEACHING FROM ROMANIA. A CRITICAL ANALYSIS AND COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES TO THE EUROPEAN LEVEL

The issue of religious education is a challenge for the modern education systems, given the great questions of contemporary society that require answers to the complex issues of social and cultural policy, or to those related to the various types of migration. In this context, even if there is no concern for building a unified model in the European countries towards the role of religious education in achieving the eight key competences set out in the European Commission Programme "Education & Training 2010", the work group "Basic skills entrepreneurship and foreign languages", the presence of the religious values in public schools is almost a universal reality.

This article aims to analyse, based on the model provided by the SWOT analysis, the main aspects related to the implementation of religious education in the undergraduate education system from Romania, at primary and secondary level. The concern for the topic covered in this article is based on nearly two decades of experience in the field. In this period, I published as author or co-author a series of works for the university or undergraduate teachers and for the students preparing to become teachers of religion, some of these works being included by the Ministry of Education from Romania in the bibliography for different exams or national teacher placement competitions in public schools.

The survey data were collected after using a system of research methods that included a questionnaire for teachers of religion, from which I collected data related to the aspects circumscribed to the religion lesson and the support that they receive from the management of their schools or from the representatives of the religious denominations, given the particularity of denominational teaching of religion in Romania. Important data were provided to me by the inspectors of religion placed under the Ministry of Education who attended the interview focused on the management of the didactic activity employed during religion classes. The last but not least, valuable data were provided to me by the parents who responded to the questionnaire items dedicated to them and by the secondary school pupils, who accepted the proposal to write an essay on the role of the religion class in their personal development and in building harmonious relationships with parents and with the people outside the family.

The main findings are related to the high expectations and the trust that parents have in the religious education carried out in the whole undergraduate school system, to the constant collaboration between the Ministry of Education and the denominations which teach religion classes, the problems arising from the particularities of school evaluation and the critique of some curricular documents, especially textbooks. The collected data highlight the formative potential of the religious values in students' personal development. The main danger reported by research participants is connected to the legislative instability concerning religion classes.