Ethics enters classrooms as alternative to religion

The Education Ministry has announced it will present an morals people adjacent schoolhouse year arsenic an alternate for students exempted from mandatory Orthodox Christian spiritual instruction.

The caller course, mandated by two 2019 Council of State rulings, requiring an alternate subject for exempted students, will tally during the aforesaid people periods arsenic spiritual studies, from third people done the last year of precocious school. Approximately 10,500 students annually presently person exemptions.

Students who are not Orthodox – including those of different faiths, atheists, oregon agnostics – whitethorn petition exemption. Classes will lone signifier where astatine slightest 10 exempted students are enrolled; otherwise, students will be different classes oregon implicit autarkic projects.

Theology departments astatine the Universities of Athens and Thessaloniki opposed the choice, advocating alternatively for a spiritual studies course, arguing morals “focuses exclusively connected normative behavioral principles, detached from the taste and humanities discourse of religion.”