Religious education in public schools has ceased to provoke such emotions and controversy as it did in 1990, when it was being officially re-introduced into the educational system. It is no longer contested so much, either, despite the fact that the question of teaching religion often recurs in all sorts of discussions and debates. However, it occurs there merely as an element of discourse touching upon broadly-conceived relations between the state and the Church, and also with reference to the place of religion within the public and sociocultural spheres. The presence of religion in the Polish school has been sanctioned for a few centuries now: the activity of the Commission for National Education, accepted – as it was – with some resistance, justified it, among others, with that teaching religion in reformed schools should not be neglected. Moreover, the reforms introduced by the Commission, which were underestimated at the beginning, later became the cornerstone of the Polish educational system, whose construction was considerably hampered due to the partitions. After regaining the independence, teaching of religion, both the Catholic one and those of other denominations was run at school from the very beginning, making an important element of the socio-patriotic rearing. That fact was reflected by successive legal acts that regulated questions of the educational-rearing nature. On the other hand, the authorities of the People’s Republic of Poland – although they formally maintained the legal state related to teaching of religion deriving from the Second Republic of Poland – in practice acted towards atheization of the Polish nation and eradication of religion from schools, which was almost successfully implemented in 1961. After 1989, attempts were made to have religion legally re-introduced into educational institutions and that not under the standard of novelty, but as a compensation for the many-century tradition. It seems justified, then, to follow the legal regulations concerning the Polish school system, especially that in the 20th century and also that of formation of mutual references of religious education and teaching organized in schools, beginning with the end of the 18th century.
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