Catholic schools, “excellent training grounds for good citizens, important places of promotion of social participation”. This was found by a survey of the “Von Hugel Centre for the promotion of faith within society”, an important ecumenical survey centre based in Cambridge which conducted a survey of over 1400 students in nineteen schools in England and Wales. The survey, which also includes interviews with about one hundred teachers, aims at finding out how much time and energy the Catholic churches invest in civics. An important issue, considering that Catholics in England and Wales are a minority: only 5% of the population, and that until the late nineteenth century they were not granted any civil rights because of well-known historical and political reasons. The result is that “citizenship education”, or civics, has a specific place in the school timetable of the Catholic schools and is also addressed when the students are dealing with different subjects. “The teaching of religion, according to the survey by the Cambridge-based Von Hugel Centre, both by studying documents of the social teaching of the Church and by attaching importance to such values as the community, the fight against poverty and prejudice and the promotion of the environment, ends up turning the Catholic students into citizens who are attentive and committed to their cities.” The survey, which is to be published soon, shows that the Catholic students are trained to become “citizens who worry about the surrounding world, who look forward to playing a role in the democratic process once they are adults”. The authors proved that the Catholic students attach importance to exchanging opinions and speaking with people from other religions and are concerned about social justice. 60% of the respondents stated that their religious training had helped them speak with people from different faiths, 65% agreed that all students should be acquainted with a variety of cultures and histories, 66% value the different kinds of people who compose society, 85% agree that the Catholic schools promote the respect of people of different races and religions, 87% love to meet people from different ethnic or social backgrounds, 90% believe no school should tolerate racism.
