Albania and the teaching of religion in schools

Abstract

Multiculturalism and the new multi religious social realities are becoming dominant dimensions of today’s world. The huge changes in the social tissue of those societies, which up to now had an established dominant culture and religious affiliation, made them now face more than the effects of migrant flows, which inevitably causes confrontations of cultures and believes. The clash of civilizations, which have been so accurately predicted, took different forms of confrontation by giving floor to extremism into its organized form: an explosion of terrorism. By considering the strong connections between poverty and lack of education as an extremism cradle, many researchers consider the inclusion of the subjects related to the history and culture of religions as a strategy to reduce cultural and religious conflict as well as extremist behavior and the bases of terrorism, by increasing information and knowledge about religion starting from early teen years. Albania, a country known for its religious tolerance, is one of those countries which’ decision makers in education actually share this point of view and is going to start a project by including a module of limited hours of teaching in medium and high school students. The paper makes an analysis of the potential effects this might have considering its application related to the initial purposes of the project, by introducing the case of Italy and its strategy of religious education over the years as a comparative tool in order to analyze and predict the potential outcomes of this intent, by considering the national background of Albania and some specific learning traits and outcomes on such topics related to age and cultural set up.