Finland's Minister of Education, Anders Adlercreutz (SPP), says the government is looking into the possibility of introducing a new subject to basic education programmes.
The aim would be to combine the current separated religious and ethics classes into a single one, according to Svenska Yle, the national broadcaster's Swedish-language news unit.
Religious education is a compulsory subject in Finland's primary and upper secondary schools. Pupils who do not belong to a religion can choose to study religious education or ethics. At the same time, pupils can get religious education in their own denomination as long as it is registered in Finland, according to the association representing religion teachers in Finland, SUOL.
"We are increasingly seeing situations where children are forced to be divided into different parallel classes based on their religion," Adlercreutz said. "I think this creates problems in a world where we should perhaps try to understand each other more. We should reduce segregation, not increase it," he continued.
In practice, Adlercreutz said he doesn't think the combination of ethics and religious topics would deviate very much from the current curriculum. But one could, he explained, imagine a model where pupils learn about their own religions and then join in on ethics lessons together.
"It would be important to create spaces where pupils with different religious backgrounds could discuss ethics and morals and common values while at the same time becoming familiar with Finland's cultural heritage, which is still largely based on Christianity," Adlercreutz said.
The minister noted that he thinks making the change will be complex, saying that he wants people to start thinking about whether a new, unsegregated curriculum would be able to address current challenges of the day. Those challenges include fewer students choosing to take part in religion classes and the difficulties involved in finding competent educators able to handle several minority religions.
A survey nearly six years ago found a majority of people in Finland (70 percent) supporting the replacement of religious and ethics education with a curriculum open to all faiths.
Christian Democrat MP Peter Östman thinks such a proposal is a bad idea, noting that creating a new religious-ethical studies subject is not something that was agreed to in the government programme.
Östman, who also serves as his party's parliamentary group chair, said he thinks the current system is good and pointed out that there is no obstacle preventing discussion of different philosophies and religions.
"I think it is a very strange way of thinking that we should abandon our traditions because we have immigrants who have different religions. We already have a very broad education programme here, where they also teach about other religions," Östman said.
"I'm surprised by this [effort], especially that it comes now, just before Christmas," he said, according to Svenska Yle.
