Earlier, when parents of today's school children went to school, religion was a private matter, something talked about at home or among friends and relatives in communist former Yugoslavia. Today, children in multi-ethnic Bosnia-Herzegovina, Catholic Croatia and Orthodox Christian Serbia run into religion the moment they start elementary school, or even kindergarten.

In all three countries, born in the bloody conflict of disintegration of former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, religious education is now a part of the curricula. Students take two or three lessons a week, depending on the country. It is usually an "optional subject", and children receive no grades for it, but it is a popular class in all three countries, with the highest attendance among Catholic Croats in Bosnia and Croatia proper, Muslim Bosniaks in Bosnia and Orthodox Serbs in the Serbian part of Bosnia called the Republic of Srpska. Ministries in the three countries do not reveal the actual number of children given religious education, but indicate that the number is high.

In post-war Bosnia or Croatia there is no great dilemma over introduction of such education. In Serbia proper it has sparked much controversy. Religious education was officially introduced in 2001, to the enthusiasm of the influential Serbian Orthodox Church. But the interest in it dropped after conservative education minister Ljiljana Covic tried to expel Darwinism and the theory of evolution from Serbian schools in 2004 and replace it with Biblical explanations. Widespread public protests led her to resign, and Darwinism continued to be taught.