Strumica, North Macedonia, September 8, 2026
tiveriopol.mk
North Macedonia’s Bureau for Development of Education has published a new high school curriculum in which “Gender and Gender Equality” is the first thematic unit of a mandatory-elective course on sexual education, placed ahead of units on physical health and abuse prevention. His Grace Bishop Jacob of Stobi, Vicar of the Diocese of Strumica, has published an open letter objecting to the curriculum’s content, arguing that it requires students to adopt fixed conclusions on gender and reproductive rights rather than examine them critically.
Bishop Jacob's letter, published September 6, 2026, was addressed to Education Minister Vesna Jaanevska, and centers on the curriculum itself, which can be read in full here.
His Grace writes that the curriculum’s stated learning outcomes require students to “accept” predetermined positions rather than analyze them. He cites several outcomes verbatim, including that a student should “consider that the traditional division of roles between women and men is not always fair,” should “support equal treatment of people regardless of their sexual or gender identity,” and should “accept that sexual and reproductive rights are part of human rights.”
He continues: “So. Not studied. Not compared. Different legal and ethical interpretations aren’t considered. Not argued. The student may not arrive at his own conclusion.” He asks: “Does critical thinking begin with a predetermined conclusion?... This isn’t education, this is training.”
The Bishop also raises the curriculum’s inclusion of a three-lesson unit covering “sexual desire, sexual pleasure, masturbation, and one’s relationship to one’s own sexuality,” asking what pedagogical purpose this serves and on what scientific basis it is included. He distinguishes between what he describes as the proper domains of biology, medicine, psychology, and sociology, and what he calls unsupported normative claims: “which science, Minister, based on what scientific evidence and what normative theory, has determined that a sixteen-year-old child must ‘accept’ a disputed anthropological and legal doctrine?”
On the curriculum’s reference to “sexual and reproductive rights” as human rights, Bishop Jacob notes that United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) documents define this framework to include access to legal abortion, medication and surgical abortion, post-abortion care, and removal of parental consent requirements for adolescents. He asks the Ministry to clarify publicly whether it uses the term in this sense, and, if so, to state this openly to parents.
The curriculum also references a teacher’s manual “prepared for the subject” without publishing it. Bishop Jacob asks who authored it, when it was adopted, and what its contents are, noting that the Macedonian NGO HERA had sought since 2013 to have the Bureau adopt a prepared manual and train teachers, and that HERA and the Bureau piloted a 36-hour program with UNFPA and International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) support in 2020. He states he is not asserting the current manual is the same document, but is requesting its publication.
Bishop[ Jacob previously addressed gender identity in education in March 2023, when, responding to a draft law on gender equality, he wrote that the concept of “gender identity” would serve “to elevate a kind of man suffering from a psychological disorder above all women and above all men in Macedonia.”
Follow OrthoChristian on Facebook, Twitter, Vkontakte, Telegram, WhatsApp, and MeWe!
