Supreme Court ruling in Spain rejects indoctrination in schools

Madrid, Spain, Feb 18, 2009 / 19:51 pm

Organizations opposed to Education for the Citizenry are praising four rulings from the Supreme Court which, while they refuse to acknowledge conscientious objection, recognize the essence of the debate and reject any kind of ideological indoctrination in Spanish schools.

“What the Supreme Court has done is issue a serious warning to the government, to the entire educational system, to schools and teachers, that they should not fall into the temptation to use Education for the Citizenry to indoctrinate Spanish children,” the civil rights watchdog website Hazteoir.org stated.  “By rejecting indoctrination by the government, the rulings make conscientious objection unnecessary, as long as the education officials follow them and implement them.”

The website noted that parents who objected were not against their children being taught morals in the abstract, but that they were against the “indoctrination it [the course] masks.”  It praised they “total” triumph of the Court rulings which warned that “in a democratic society, it should not be the educational Administration—or the schools or specific teachers either—who set themselves up as the arbiters of controversial moral questions.”

In addition, the rulings point out that if a particular educational program or textbook is shown to contain indoctrination, the Courts can be petitioned to use “whatever means necessary to immediately halt that activity.”

Jaime Urcelay, president of Professionals for Ethics, said the Supreme Court “has addressed the underlying demands made by parents by giving them new legal arguments to defend themselves from school indoctrination.”

“The legal battle for freedom of education and of ideology has only just begun because conscientious objection is not an end in itself but just a means,” Urcelay said. “As we have always stated, we will stand by the parents who want to move ahead in defending their fundamental rights.”