I'm not sure if I didn't get it or I got it all too well... If you want to educate pupils to be critical, then of course they need to be critical not only in a curriculum-intended classroom setting. They need to be critical in all parts of life, or you've failed in what you wanted to teach them. This also means arguing against catholic dogma in catholic religion class. Every point of view needs to be defended, even the point of view that the teacher and curriculum promotes. Arguing otherwise means that you teach pupils to only be critical on a few select subjects that are politically acceptable to be critical about, like the usual tropes of "human rights in china" or "death penalty in the US". Then you are just teaching the faking of critical thinking and reading, not the actual thing.

Bavaria re-introduced crosses in classrooms several years ago, with very shady arguments.

> "And why wouldn't all religions be treated equal in a country that guarantees religious freedom?" and "Religion calsses are, by the way, mandatory in all (most?) German states, and the church has huge sa in who teaches it."

The notion of religious freedom that you promote and that schools promote explicitly excludes freedom from religion, i.e. Atheism or Agnosticism. Just like forced religious education (couldn't pick ethics as an alternative for lack of teachers, and as soon as ethics was available, noticed that the religion curriculum is literally "dancing and singing" while ethics is hardcore philosophy to keep pupils away from the subject and from any kind of acceptable grades).

Oh, and that the death penalty was abolished is beside the point. If you pick "death penalty" as a subject of discussion, then of course it must be an equally valid outcome of the discussion to be pro death penalty, if the arguments provided weigh more heavily. Changing policy isn't the intent here. Learning to discuss such matters critically is. Which doesn't work if the outcome is predetermined and you will be punished with bad marks for arriving at the "wrong" conclusion.