Religious Education in Public School: An Analysis of the Slovenian Model within the European Context Aleš Črnič and Anja Pogačnik
Summary: The article addresses the issue of religious education (RE) in the modern public school. First we look at the key conceptions of religious education based on its orientation (confessional / multi-confessional / non-confessional), organisation (integrative / separative / dimensional), and prevailing approach (learning religion / learning about religion / learning from religion). We also highlight the problem of implicit confessionality of non-confessional RE models stemming from an unreflected dominance of the ‘world religions paradigm.’ The central part of the article sums up the main findings of our comparative analysis of European RE models before providing a critical analysis of RE in contemporary Slovenia. We conclude that Slovenian RE is well-designed but was never fully realised in practice and therefore we propose a series of recommendations for its systematic revitalisation.