THE TEACHING ABOUT RELIGION AT SLOVENE PUBLIC SCHOOLS Zdenko Kodelja Educational Research Institute Ljubljana, Slovenia The teaching about religion at public schools in Slovenia is, from a legal point of view, similar to that in France or USA 1 and at the same time, different from that of the majority of European countries where the laws guarantee religious instruction within the framework of the public school. According to the Slovene Constitution, there is a separation of Church and State. For this reason religious instruction at the public school is explicitly prohibited by the school laws. 2 Formerly that was completely different. Before the Second World War, religious instruction was not only an obligatory school matter at the public school, but it was also regarded as base and crowning of public education. The answer that can explain why religious instruction and religion were treated thus can be found in the conception that today is still frequently defended, and according to which, there are no morals independent of religion, and consequently no education independent of religion, because there is no education without morals. After the Second World War this conception was no longer acceptable to the Yugoslav State, of which Slovenia formed an integral part, because the official ideology was Marxism. But in spite of the change of the dominant ideology and the separation of Church and State, religious instruction at school was tolerated until 1952. From then on, religious instruction was expelled from the school and was organized by the Churches in ecclesiastical buildings. Only exceptionally was it organized inside school premises, but always separate from regular classes. At public school, religious instruction was replaced by civic and moral education. The communist party required the exact same thing of schools that the Catholic Church had prior; that all school subjects, even mathematics and the natural sciences, be permeated with their ideology, once of Catholicism, and now Marxism. It was a case of ideologically directed teaching, which excluded THE SCHOOL FIELD l VOLUME X (1999) l NUMBER 3/4 l pp. 153-158.