Critics say a 60-year-old practice of segregating faiths for weekly lessons is out of step with modern need for coexistence
It is 8am and Corine Vida, 50, is preparing for a class of 13- to 14-year-olds. She arranges tables and chairs into a U shape so that the pupils have to look at and speak to one another. The empty space represents "the agora, the space in which to pour out words and ideas", explains this teacher of "non-confessional morals" at the Athénée des Pagodes secondary school at Laeken, a suburb of Brussels.
The school has 700 pupils in all, but this morning 14 teenagers, displaying varying degrees of sleepiness and enthusiasm, line up behind their seats. "Sit down, take out your register and mark today's date. I shall record attendance," she says firmly.
The programme for today's 90-minute lesson, the penultimate before the end-of-year exam, includes a section on method, then a question for debate: "Have you ever eaten human flesh?"
The students appear unshocked. In previous sessions they have discussed the relationship between humans and animals. "We accept the theory of evolution, but if anyone has other beliefs, please speak up," Vida says. There is silence.
Those with "other beliefs" may be elsewhere, perhaps in parallel classes for Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox Christians, Muslims and Jews.
The Belgian national curriculum requires pupils to spend two hours a week, for 12 years, studying morals – either non-confessional or religious, depending on their own or more likely their parents' beliefs. "It's a big headache for the timetable," says Charly Hannon, the school head. If just one pupil demands a course for their religion, a teacher has to be found.
And what has all this to do with morals? It is a sort of "default" subject for many pupils with no beliefs, or at least none that are officially recognised, explains Jean de Brueker, the deputy head of the Lay Action Centre. He would prefer classes in philosophy, which he sees as a way to foster "consensus on shared values and promote social cohesiveness and the development of an inclusive society".
Whatever your point of view, this aspect of the Belgian education system seems to be in need of a rethink. It was set out about 60 years ago when a compromise needed to be found between Catholics who advocated freedom of religion in instruction and their opponents – socialists, communists and liberals – who supported secular state education. So in 1959, a pact between centre-left parties guaranteed a free choice over what both primary and secondary schools taught.
The dominance of Catholics in Belgium back then led to state schools having to include religious instruction in their curriculum, whereas "free" schools were under no obligation to organise classes on morals. Society is very different now, particularly in Brussels where the population is made up of people from many faiths and cultures and there is a need for them to be brought together rather than segregated according to religion via the education system.
To complicate matters further for the heads of state schools, the supervision of religious education classes is now in the hands of the relevant clerics. "I just want to check that the teaching is actually in French," says Hannon. How, under these circumstances is it possible to prevent teaching hostile to social harmony or the spread of radical ideas? It is a major problem for the schools operated by the Greater Brussels authority, which maintains a position of "active neutrality". The headteacher has no intention of promoting secular values but is worried, in particular, about some of the teaching dispensed by Islamic instructors. "Given the huge mixture of cultures, it wouldn't take much for things to slip out of control," he warns.
For the second half of the lesson Vida asks her pupils to read a text by the atheist French philosopher Michel Onfray, sentence by sentence. "It stops them staring at the ceiling," she explains. "Driven by a vital need, can one eat human flesh?" Florian reads out. "Is it shameful to eat our fellows?" Tiffany continues. "What would we feel if we ate humans?" Ashmita asks. Off his own bat Elliot inquires: "Is it bad for our health?", but is ticked off. "This isn't a lesson on diet and I'm not a nutritional expert," Vida retorts. Debate then turns to respect for the dead, burial rites, the concept of vital needs and custom.
In the digital age it is an uphill struggle persuading young people to read carefully, classify ideas and organise their thoughts logically. But here that goal seems to have been achieved. "I try to develop their basic critical faculties, so that as young adults they will be able to think freely," Vida sums up as she wipes the board clean, ready for the next class.
We follow her to a classroom in another part of the school. She rearranges it in a similar way. But here her lesson hinges on identity and difference, with references to Rimbaud, Shakespeare and Freud. At one point even Alfred Hitchcock crops up, with mention of Spellbound and how a psychiatrist uses her skills to unlock the amnesia of the man she loves and clear his name. Intrigued by this account of dreams, amnesia, guilt and innocence the supposedly blase students display a lively interest in Vida's suggestion that ultimately we are an enigma to ourselves.
This article appeared in Guardian Weekly, which incoporates material from Le Monde