공립학교에서의 종교교육의 필요성과 역할

For Religious Education in Public Schools: Reasons and Roles

Present postmodern and multicultural condition drive us to reflect on introducing religious education into public schools. The purpose of this study was to suggest some urgent reasons for having religious education in public schools and to deduce its roles from those reasons. The result is as following. Religious education is required largely for three reasons. First, it is needed for religious literacy in liberal education. Second, it is required for cultivating mutual respects for civic purpose. And finally, it is required for moral education, giving a supportive framework for moral deliberation. From these, two large roles are deduced: one for liberal education, the other for civic education. For liberal aspect, religious education has to secure students’ spiritual growth and to prepare them to face multiculture, and for the civic aspect, it must have students equipped with ‘reasonable disagreement’ required for deliberative democracy.