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After a manifesto defending that the The subject “Education for Citizenship and Development” must be optional, more than 500 subscribers have joined in a countermanifesto answer, which rejects the possibility of evoking conscientious objection from parents for 2 students.º e 3. º cycles does not attend discipline.
The document released this Friday has the support of former MEP Ana Gomes, deputies Pedro Bacelar de Vasconcelos and Alexandre Quintanilha, professor Teresa Pizarro Beleza, aex-secretary of State for citizenship and for Equality Catarina Marcelino, the political scientist Marina Costa Lobo, the psychiatrist Ana Matos Pires, among other teachers, politicians, journalists, doctors, researchers, deputies and national and local organizations.
In total, this new manifesto has approximately five times more signatures than original manifesto, signed by almost 100 personalities, including the former president of the Republic Cavaco Silva, the former Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho and the Patriarch of Lisbon, D. Manuel Clemente.
In the manifesto, the approximately 500 subscribers underline that not only science, but also ethics is the basis of education and argue that the contents of the topic under discussion help students to “distinguish between what is ideology and what is knowledge”. .
They also consider that “it is neither reasonable nor acceptable that a basic knowledge of Human Rights and Citizenship of all human beings is considered optional.” “As we have recently learned from the pandemic,” the text continues, “we increasingly need measures that involve the whole of society because only in this way can we create healthy, equitable and fair human environments.” For subscribers, “letting Human Rights content be reserved for only a portion of the students would contribute to increasing inequality against essential civic knowledge.”
Subscribers emphasize that, regardless of the role of families, “leaving these competencies to families would only deepen the gap between students, not strengthen them with a common knowledge base and fuel cycles of hatred and violence ”.
In statements to Jornal de Notícias (JN), Helena Ferro de Gouveia, one of the authors of the manifesto, explains that this response “is a public stance to attack a discipline that is fundamental for the education of young people and for the creation of a better society.”
The constitutionalist Pedro Bacelar de Vasconcelos also points out, in statements to the JN, that “the content of the discipline is in the Portuguese Constitution” and that “everything that concerns citizenship must form part of education”.
Fenprof: “Making discipline optional is an attack”
The National Federation of Teachers (Fenprof) also defended this Thursday in favor of the compulsory discipline of Education for Citizenship and Development, considering that the suspicion launched represents “an unacceptable attack” on teachers.
“The school may not have the means or the conditions to respond to all the challenges that arise”, but “it cannot fail to respond, among many others, to the challenge of citizenship and development, and that cannot be a mere option ”, says Fenprof.
For Fenprof’s national board, education for citizenship and development is a curricular space where children and young people talk about life, debate human rights, sex education, road safety education or environmental education, “contributing to the formation of responsible citizens , autonomous, critical and supportive in a society that wants to be democratic ”.
Fenprof maintains that it is “an old concern that began to take its first steps in 1988, following what was enshrined in the Basic Law of the Educational System, when Roberto Carneiro was Minister of Education in a government headed by Cavaco Silva.”
The National Board of Fenprof also considers that “the distrust that arises in relation to the way in which this discipline is taught in schools represents a more unacceptable attack on its teachers” and its pedagogical and management bodies.
