The Assessement Of Religious Education Through The Toledo Guide In Romania

The main actors on the global scene, the State, the Church and society, together with their values, their identity, their faith, and democracy, are involved in a new dilemma of the individual’s relationship to community, with crucial impacts on the position of universality and transcendence in society. The acute crisis in the recent history triggered a new step in the religious, intercultural or confessional education, which must generate an articulated answer in a field cleared of secularism. This is the key for the interpretation of the new State-cults partnerships in education. Thus the interest manifested by students in the non-confessional public schools reveal the need to present in a balanced way the intercultural and interreligious elements, supported in the OSCE vision by the Toledo Guide. The assessment of the religious education class from an intercultural perspective showed that the Orthodox format is quite close to the recommended principles and intercultural values. Nevertheless, in spite of the lack of intercultural education in the structure of these classes the students have a certain level of knowledge from other sources also deserving investigation.