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Artur Mesquita Guimarães, father of the two children who do not participate in the issue of Citizenship and Development due to family decision, wrote an open letter to the President of the Republic about the report that was broadcast on TVI, on September 2. In this television work, the journalist affirmed that the Secretary of State for Education, João Costa, accused “the parents of two Famalicão students of using their children in an ideological campaign.”
After receiving confirmation from the channel that the statement was actually from the Secretary of State, Artur Mesquita Guimarães wrote that it was about “Serious, it is 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.
In the same letter, Famalicão’s father says that decisions about the education of the children “are guided exclusively by the criterion of the greater good of their children” and that the accusation of the Secretary of State had been “gratuitous and rude.”
“It was precisely to prevent the State from using our children as a result of an ideological campaign that we, with the superior natural authority of parents (which the Constitution recognizes by the way), exempted them from attending this discipline,” he writes, highlighting that, like parents, we feel “deeply offended, as individuals and as citizens in the performance of our duties, with this public affront”.
“Mr. João Costa should wait to respond to the lawsuit that we have filed against the Camilo Castelo Branco School Group, in Vila Nova de Famalicão and against the Ministry of Education, which is in the Administrative and Fiscal Court of Braga. However, we understand that, with this, Mr. João Costa can no longer hold the public position of Undersecretary of State and Education ”.
On Thursday, a manifesto began to circulate that brings together 500 people who defend that the school subject of Education for Citizenship and Development (DPI) cannot be the object of conscientious objection from parents towards 2nd and 3rd year students. Cycles, writes Jornal de Notícias.
The petition with the name “Citizenship and development: citizenship is not an option” has the support of figures such as Ana Gomes, Pedro Bacelar de Vasconcelos, Teresa Pizarro Beleza and Daniel Oliveira. The signatories include politicians, teachers, doctors, journalists, deputies and researchers, among others.
Petition with 500 subscribers defends that “citizenship is not an option”
The petition arises after the petition that brought together nearly 100 personalities, including Cavaco Silva and Passos Coelho, for the right to conscientious objection of parents who do not want to have children in Citizenship Education classes.
This occurs as a consequence of the case of the 12 and 14-year-old siblings from Vila Nova de Famalicão, who were initially prevented from passing to the seventh and ninth grade, respectively, for not having attended DPI classes, of the Camilo School Association. Castelo Branco, by decision of his parents.
