Ankara, Turkey - A survey indicated that more than 70 percent of all high school students in Turkey want their religious education to bring them closer to their own beliefs. Turkish teenagers also want to receive both traditional and modern religious education.
The survey on "Religion and Life Perspectives among Adolescents" polling approximately 10,000 high school students from 10 countries and conducted by Germany's Wuerzberg University, reveals teenage expectations of religious education. The teenagers were from Turkey, Germany, the UK, Finland, Sweden, Ireland, Holland, Poland, Croatia and Israel.
The survey provided clues to opinions on religious classes in Turkey, where a debate on compulsory or optional religious education is taking place. More than 70 percent of all high school students in Turkey want their religious education to bring them closer to their own beliefs. Turkish teenagers also want to receive both traditional and modern religious education.
Assistant Professor Recep Kaymakcan of Sakarya University's theology department coordinated the project in Turkey. Just over 900 adolescents were chosen from successful high schools in middle-sized cities all over Turkey to answer questions on the approach to traditional and modern religious education. Just over 50 percent of Turkish students said "religious education should help us be religious" while 74.3 percent expressed their expectation that religious education should help in seeking answers to their "quest for the meaning of life."
The survey shows that Western high school students preferred modern religious education over traditional. A large portion of Western European adolescents think that religious education should only give general information about religion.
As opposed to Western European high school students who disapprove of traditional religious education, Eastern Europeans, Israelis and Turkish students want both. Kaymakcan evaluated these answers favoring both and said, "This situation may show that these countries are in a transitional process from traditional religious education towards the modern." Kaymakcan underlined the significance of religious education for Turkey and said, "Religious education has a significant function in providing social peace."
He also underlined the need for a change in religious education in Turkey and added that the current policy of religious education, which he said was developed in the past, should be reviewed with the changing conditions in mind. Assistant Professor Kaymakcan said that the report would be presented as a book in two months' time.