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The Citizenship and Development course, whose obligation is generating controversy, began to be taught in the 2017-18 academic year, with the aim of promoting a more just and inclusive society through education.
Within the scope of the National Strategy for Education for Citizenship, the discipline began to be taught in the first years of each teaching cycle in 235 public and private schools that were part of the Curricular Autonomy and Flexibility Project.
The teaching of the discipline has advanced in pilot schools under the National Citizenship Strategy, presented in March 2017 in Covilhã.
“This is a pilot project that serves to prepare us for the coming years and that ‘legitimizes’ many of the practices that already occurred in our schools and that are now regulated and that end up happening with another robustness,” said the Minister of Education, Tiago Brandão Rodrigues.
In 2018 the subject was formally extended to all schools in the country, being compulsory in the 2nd and 3rd cycles of Basic Education, containing topics such as health and sexuality education, volunteering, gender equality or the safe road.
The National Strategy for Education for Citizenship defines “a set of rights and duties that must be present in the citizenship training of Portuguese children and young people” and the working group that drafted it recommended strengthening Education for Citizenship from pre-education – school until the end of compulsory education.
The Citizenship and Development subject is part of the components of the national curriculum and is developed in schools according to three complementary approaches: transdisciplinary character in the 1st cycle of basic education, autonomous discipline in the 2nd and 3rd cycle of basic education and component of the curriculum developed in all areas with the contribution of all subjects and components of training in secondary education.
The obligation and the possibility that parents can invoke conscientious objection so that their children do not attend the discipline has been the subject of discussion in recent days with the appearance of a manifesto signed by 100 personalities -among them the former president- of the Republic Cavaco Silva, the former Prime Minister Passos Coelho and the Cardinal-Patriarch of Lisbon, Manuel Clemente – who disputes the mandatory nature of the discipline, and another, with 8,000 signatures, defending its mandatory nature.
The controversy has its origin in the case of two brothers from Vila Nova de Famalicão, in the district of Braga, who missed all classes of this discipline at the option of their parents, who argue that the topics discussed are the educational responsibility of the families .
On Monday in a debate at Rádio Renascença with the Secretary of State for Education, the former rector of the Braga da Cruz Catholic University, and one of the subscribers to the manifesto defended that the petition with 100 personalities arises from a broader apprehension about the that happens in Portuguese schools with the introduction of gender ideology.
“It is not a question of gender equality, no one is against gender equality, but the possibility that the State reprogrammed Education or allows others to make the ideological connotation of gender ideology,” he said.
Braga da Cruz defended that the discipline has an orientation guide that “who reads it is aware that there is an ideological orientation that has no scientific sustainability”, which he considers controversial and that raises conscientious objection.
The Health Education framework, which accompanies the National Citizenship Strategy, provides guidelines for schools and the theme of identity and gender is a sub-theme of one of the global themes. In this case, it is included in the topic Affections and education in sexuality, which also includes the subtopics of affective relationships, values, development of sexuality, motherhood and fatherhood, and sexual and reproductive rights.
“At the identity level the foundations of human construction are at stake. Being unique people, with a sexed body, a mind of their own, a story that carries the legacy of a past and where the hopes of the future fit, is the basic acquisition of the awareness that puts us on the social scene. Identity is the imprint of our being, being and becoming. Growing is being able to be more and more who we are. Gender roles are social constructions whose content changes over time and depends on culture. ethnic origin, religion, education and the geographical, economic and political environment in which we live. However, behavioral models are only references to our own gender identity, and do not determine or should limit the way we express it “, read in the referential.
According to the guiding document, gender thus describes a set of qualities and behaviors that societies expect from individuals and that contributes to forming their social identity, an identity that differs from one culture to another and in different periods of history while Gender identity is the internal and individual experience of gender deeply felt by each person who may or may not live up to social expectations.
In the identity and gender subtopic, students are asked to develop an awareness of being a unique person when it comes to sexuality, identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation; the subject is treated differently depending on the level of education. – as well as developing a positive attitude towards gender equality.
In the Subtopic Development of sexuality, the reference points to the objective of being able to accept and integrate the physical and emotional changes associated with sexuality throughout life and to be responsible towards oneself and others.
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