[ad_1]
The race for manifestos and petitions on the controversy over citizenship classes continues. Now it was the parliamentary leader of the PS, Ana Catarina Mendes, who, as her office announced, signed the “Manifesto for Education for Citizenship and Development”, which defends that “citizenship is not an option.” Ana Catarina Mendes thus joins other personalities, such as the former Socialist MEP Ana Gomes, who had signed a petition with the same objective.
“Learning about Human Rights and Citizenship is not an ideological content, it is a discipline that allows everyone to know their rights, respect the rights of other people and know what duties they collectively have to build a society that respects everyone,” read in the manifesto, which is added to the petition that began to circulate this Thursday, to defend that “citizenship is not an option” and that has already gathered 500 subscribers, including names such as former socialist MEP Pedro Bacelar de Vasconcelos, Teresa Pizarro Beleza or Daniel Oliveira.
Petition with 500 subscribers defends that “citizenship is not an option”
The Manifesto seeks to explain how the importance of education for citizenship and human rights is defended by various international organizations, since “the future of the Earth, in social and environmental terms, depends on the formation of citizens with skills and values not just to understand the world around them, but also to find solutions ”.
For the authors of the Manifesto, the discipline must be compulsory in the 2nd and 3rd cycle of basic education, noting that this was defined in the “Profile of Students Graduated from Compulsory Education”, defined by law in 2017. “We know that Everything is learned at school and families, parents, institutions and communities also play an important role in the development of knowledge, skills and attitudes in these areas. However, leaving these competencies only to families would deepen the gap between students, not strengthen them with a common knowledge base and fuel cycles of hatred and violence, ”he still says.
This manifesto and petitions arise after a petition that brought together almost 100 personalities, among them Cavaco Silva and Passos Coelho, for the right to conscientious objection of parents who do not want to have children in Citizenship Education classes. The case of two brothers from Vila Nova de Famalicão, 12 and 14 years old, who were initially prevented from passing to the seventh and ninth grade, respectively, for not having attended IPD classes, of the Camilo Castelo Branco Association of Schools is discussed. , by decision of their parents.
Citizenship. 17 answers to understand the case of honor roll students who failed in Famalicão
This Friday, according to The Observer, the father of the children in question, Artur Mesquita Guimarães, wrote a open letter to the president of the republic on the question, saying that in the report that was broadcast on TVI on September 2, the journalist said that the Secretary of State for Education, João Costa, accused “the parents of two Famalicão students of using their children in an ideological campaign ”. What is considered for parents “Serious, very serious.”
“It expresses a total lack of respect for my family, a reckless judgment on me and my wife in an unsubstantiated, distorted and publicly pronounced statement that reveals the lack of ethical sense, which is imposed on any figure of State,” he writes. The report says that “the secretary of state believes that children are being used in a kind of campaign,” showing the government official that “there is, in fact, perhaps an ideological position in the signatories.”
Citizenship. Father of Famalicão students asks the President of the Republic to remove the Secretary of State for Education
As soon as the case was made public, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa received in Belém the first two subscribers of the petition “in defense of educational freedoms”, Manuel Braga da Cruz and Mário Pinto. As The Observer wrote, the President of the Republic wanted to give a double signal that he is attentive and sensitive to anyone who feels certain freedoms threatened.
* Article updated with the content of the Manifesto signed by the socialist parliamentary leader
