Charity Or Tolerance? Debating Moralities in the Educational System of Contemporary Serbia‪.‬

Abstract: After regime change in 2000, the Serbian Ministry of Education introduced two new subjects in the schools: civic education and religious education. Representatives of local civil society associated the establishment of religious education in schools with a rise in nationalism and a split of the society into "believers" and "citizens". Representatives of the church, on the other hand, criticised the concept of civic education as redundant, and its establishment as merely the minister's "plot" to weaken the reintroduction of religious education. The paper discusses the debate on the new school subjects against the background of Serbia's socialist past, the rise of militant nationalism in the 1990s (respectively its recent ascension), and the democratisation and human rights discourse.