Natalia Andreevna Cherepanova

The authors develop their concepts from the fact that religious consciousness is one of the categories of consciousness, a way of experiencing and comprehending the world and oneself by a person, which performs an instrumental function — it creates a system of values and hierarchizes them. Religious consciousness is formed and strengthened through educational practices and upbringing at school. It is externalized in the collective consciousness — the religious culture of society. The academic subject “Fundamentals of Religious Culture and Secular Ethics” solves several tasks related to the spiritual and moral development of a primary school student and contributes to the formation of universal values, noted in Decree of the President of the Russian Federation “On approval of the fundamentals of state policy for preserving and strengthening traditional Russian spiritual and moral values” (November 9, 2022 No. 809). The research conducted among primary school students of the Smolensk Orthodox Gymnasium, whose curriculum included the course “Fundamentals of Religious Culture and Secular Ethics,” showed that the fifth-grade students demonstrate confident knowledge of the main religious denominations represented on the territory of the Russian Federation and understand religious traditions and norms of ethnic groups in Russia. Comparative research of the planned educational results of the “Fundamentals of Religious Culture and Secular Ethics” course, expressed in the acquired and developed spiritual and moral values of schoolchildren, made it possible to identify interference with the values listed in the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation “On approval of the fundamentals of state policy for preserving and strengthening traditional Russian spiritual and moral values” (November 9, 2022 No. 809) with the values that serve as the basis for strategic planning in the area of ensuring national security of the Russian Federation, the key once being life, dignity, human rights, freedom, humanism, mercy, service to the Fatherland, patriotism, and continuity of generations and historical memory.