Profession of teacher of Christian ethics to become official profession

The Department of Higher Education of the Ministry of Education and Science and the Institute of Innovation Technologies are currently working to make the Christian ethics teacher profession an official profession. To move the work along, higher education institutions are to prepare appropriate documents, the main specialist of the Department of General, Secondary and Preschool Education of the Ministry of Education and Science, Youth and Sports, Raisa Yevtushenko, said during the national seminar for methodologists of regional institutes of postgraduate pedagogical education of Ukraine “Specificities of the study of courses of spiritual and moral character in educational institutions of Ukraine.”

The seminar was held on February 22-23 in the Ukrainian Catholic University and was attended by about seventy teachers and scholars from all over Ukraine, the Information Department of UCU reported.

According to Raisa Yevtushenko, the courses of spiritual and moral character in Ukraine are very promising. “This subject has been studied since 1992. But only since 2005 has it been taught as Christian ethics in 5th and 6th grades as an elective course. In the last 5 years, the number of schools where Christian ethics is taught has increased by 50 percent. As the subject has only recently 'emerged from underground,' there are many problems with teaching it. First of all, the qualification and retraining of teachers. Therefore, this seminar is of great importance.”