James Conroy is Vice President of International Office at the University of Glasgow (UK) and Professor of Education Religious and Philosophical. At the UK campus he has also held the positions of Dean of the School of Education and director of the department of Education Religious. He is currently a visiting researcher at Oxford University.

He has also served as president of the association of Education Moral and is currently president of the Philosophy Societyof Great Britain's Education . In 2011 he was elected a Fellow of their Academy of Social Sciences. He is the author of over 100 papers and essays and three monographs, the most recent of which was awarded in 2014 by the Society for programs of study of the Education.

Professor Conroy was one of the keynote speakers at the international congress 'Abrahamic Religions and Interreligious Relations in the Past and Present', organized by the project 'Religion and Civil Society' of the Institute for Culture and Society of the University of Navarra.

We live in a globalized and very complex world, can we say that Education is, now more than ever, very important?

I believe that the religious Education has always been important. People need to know the culture and traditions from which we emerge. What is most remarkable is that, in a global world with capital, money, resources or people moving around, the idea of a greater skill for mutual understanding seems to be hugely problematic.

One of the great difficulties of the religious Education in Europe is that the correct religious literacy of the citizens is not achieved. The Old Continent is more concerned with the ritual internship of religion and with the ethical obsessions of modernity than with understanding why people are religious and what are the claims that religion makes on people and that they try to respond to in their lives and practices.

How can religion promote promote mutual understanding between religions?

The Education must do what is expected of it: educate people. When Education confuses knowledge with affection or feelings, then Education suffers. And when this happens, the person suffers.

The Education in and about religion allows the person to understand more deeply the postulates of religion: theological ones, ethical ones, those with a certain meaning that have their origin in the deep understanding of human hope, aspirations, fear, passion... The Education itself should address all these things and, probably, can help to live better in a very changing and globalized world.

What is the best model of Education for promote mutual understanding between religions and interfaith dialogue?

There are many ways to do this. Undoubtedly, one of them is to put people of different religions on contact with each other. Therefore, providing facilities or programs that keep people in a continuous contact with each other is a good way to promote understanding.

Educate the person to understand the other financial aid, but the most important thing is to educate him first to understand himself, his own religious tradition and his psychological relationship with that tradition because it is the foundation on which everything else is built.

Could you summarize the main ideas or conclusions of your monograph "Does religious education work"?

This monograph is the result of a three-year ethnographic research on the internship of the Education religious that we conducted in 24 schools in the UK. In conducting this study, we found several interesting things. First, there is a belief that religious Education should contain many educational obligations, from Education sexual to Education moral or citizenship. In addition, we found that some textbooks and student materials are insufficiently supported, often poorly written or misused in schools. Third, the examination system employee does not develop very sophisticated knowledge of religion, and teachers are often ill-prepared and confused as to what they are expected to do.

Also striking is the high Degree of confusion between people's feelings and their beliefs and knowledge. The knowledge is usually overlaid by my own feelings, and it is a big problem because if I feel something is true, it must be true.

Those would be the five main points we can draw from the study, but there is one more: the Education religious often does not take theology seriously, whether it is Christianity, Judaism, or Islam. Students don't grapple with the question of why people believe these things, how people view these things, and how they formulate these beliefs.

Is the religious Education also important for non-believers?

Absolutely. I believe that all human beings in a democratically liberal society have to be able to understand, participate and live with people who are very different culturally, religiously, socially?

A good religious Education is one that produces good religious literacy and is ready for everyone. This literacy does not force one to believe in something, but financial aid to understand the grammar of religion, the geography, the topography, the way religion brings culture to societies. Even for a non-believer, not understanding this causes a deep void in their Education.

The financing of the region by the State is a permanent discussion . What arguments can be used in favor of this support?

The first thing to make clear is that Education religious education is usually poorly funded by the state. Another surprising data that we discovered thanks to our study is that schools spend less than 50 cents per year per student on religious Education . So it can be said that the state does not spend much on religious Education .

The dilemma is whether this is a State obligation or not. I believe it is. In state-funded Education systems, the work of the state is to fund a Education for everyone. If part of the Education is to keep people religiously literate, which is different from making them believers, then the state has to fund it.

The State must finance the religious Education : the main reason is that everyone needs religious Education to be able to live in a complex society such as the present one.