RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazil’s Minister of Human Rights, Damares Alves, said in Belo Horizonte that the federal government will set up a channel for parents of students to complain about teachers who, during classes, attack “the morals, religion, and ethics of the family”.
The minister was in the capital of Minas Gerais to take part in a public hearing in the Legislative Assembly on suicide and self-mutilation among youths. She said the instrument will be announced later this year, but did not provide details about its operation.
“The channel is being shaped among the ministries of education and human rights. It will be announced soon. What we want is only compliance with the law. Brazil is a signatory of the Pact of San José of Costa Rica. It states that the school cannot teach anything that undermines the morals, religion, and ethics of the family”.
The Ministry of Education did not comment when questioned.
As an example, the minister mentioned the case of a 6th-grade teacher from a school in the Federal District who was accused of having asked the students to write about oral and anal sex. “The family needs to be heard. What we wish to develop in Brazil is a partnership between the school and the family. The family must be consulted, although not delegating their responsibilities”.
Jair Bolsonaro’s administration is critical of the supposed indoctrination and preaching of “gender ideology” in the classroom by teachers. This term has been used by conservative groups, although it is not adopted in universities and schools.
The fight against indoctrination is a flagship of the Escola Sem Partido (“School Without Partisans”) movement, a group created in 2004 to demand tools to monitor and punish alleged excesses by teachers. In recent years, bills based on this concept have been passed in Congress and local legislatures.
The right way
According to the minister, the best way to address issues such as sex is “in the right way, obeying the specificities of age, with a prepared teacher, as it was many years ago when I was a child,” she said, who pledged that no clashes will occur.
“We have the concept of what is good. The teacher has good sense. We are not in any way going to wage a war against the school. All we want is a school/family partnership. And this is possible”.
Damares said that “adequate” material will be sent by the ministries and that there will be no punishment against teachers. “It is possible to address all these topics in an educational way. What we are talking about is the absurdities that have happened, like yesterday,” she said, referring to the teacher from Brasília.
“There is no radical, oppressive government here that will ban talks on these issues, obeying, I repeat, the right teaching material, the right age and the right way with children”.
In May, the Minister of Education, Abraham Weintraub, came to encourage the denunciation of teachers, employees, parents, and students who encouraged protests during school hours. At that time, groups of students and scientists took to the streets to protest the federal cuts in the area.
In September, Weintraub sent a letter to the education secretariats recommending plurality in education. The minister avoided linking the document, which made no mention of “indoctrination” or “ideology”, to the School Without Partisans, and said the goal was “to ease tensions”.
Source: Veja