María Jesús Cañizares
03.04.2019 18:24 h.
School indoctrination. A total of 18 social entities and 140 personalities promote the manifesto “For language coexistence, political neutrality and educational quality” in which they advocate avoiding school indoctrination and the use of language as a throwing weapon among politicians. They also bet on recovering the culture of effort.
The intention is to send their proposals to all political forces and educational actors in order to make them the focus of public and parliamentary debate. Among the signatories are Mario Vargas Llosa, Fernando Savater, Félix de Azúa, Juan Velarde Fuertes and Fernando Sánchez Dragó, Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, Andrés Trapiello, Carlos Jiménez Villarejo and Arcadi Espada, and up to 18 social organisations.
All of them endorse a document promoted by professors José Manuel Cansino, Antonio Jimeno Fernández, Alfonso Valero Aguado and Isabel Fernández Alonso in which they denounce that “in the autonomous communities with two official languages the use of Spanish as a vehicular/common language has been totally excluded, or to a large extent, secessionist nationalist indoctrination is taught in some centers and, in addition, the results of our students in international tests show that they are not well prepared “.
The signatories summarise their claims in three points:
1. The coexistence of official languages, which should never be used as an element of confrontation. To this end, they propose “that students be received in their mother tongue and that, subsequently, they gradually incorporate another language or languages”. At the same time, they defend that “in access to teaching, knowledge of the local language, in no way, can be a requirement for exclusion”.
2. The political neutrality of schools, “avoiding any attempt at indoctrination of minors, either through manuals, political symbols or extracurricular activities”, because “ideological freedom is a fundamental right and, therefore, inalienable in a democratic context”.
3. And the quality of teaching. In this sense, they recommend “establishing common external tests for all: one at the end of Primary Education and another at the end of Compulsory Secondary Education (ESO)”, with the aim of “stimulating the culture of effort, verifying that the political neutrality is maintained, that the contents of the different subjects are taught with due rigor, discovering the most effective educational models and harmonizing the quality of the educational service for all students, whatever their place of residence”.
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