Two thousand parents in Spain demand leaders hold meeting to discuss ‘Education for the Citizenry’

Madrid, Spain, Apr 5, 2009 / 23:52 pm

Representatives of more than 2,000 families have demanded a meeting with government officials in Castilla y Leon to discuss their concerns over the classroom course, Education for the Citizenry, after the regional school board refused to meet with them.

Last month, various family organizations that objected to the contents of the course requested an urgent meeting with the Board of Education.

After receiving no response they made their request again ten days later, saying that their intention was to find a compromise in between the conflicting ideas of the families and state’s ideological agenda.

According to Marisa Perez Toribio, who represents one parental organization, meetings with the Board of Education in 2008 yielded no results because the board refused to accept any of the solutions put forth by parents, in contrast with other communities in Spain under the control of the Popular Party that have offered parents alternatives and have evaluated students who have sat out of the course on a case-by-case basis.

"Solutions exist, and the Board has the power to adopt measures that will resolve the conflict," Perez Toribio said.  "Again, we don’t understand the position of the board. In response to this refusal by the board, the representatives of parents have turned to the president of Castilla y Leon to explain these issues directly to him," she said.

"There is nothing we parents want more than to see our kids rejoin their classes as normal, but they will not do so as long as we do not have guarantees that this course is not going to be used to impose its objectives, content and way of thinking, and its concrete moral and ideological concepts, on our children.  This is something the schools cannot do, as the recent ruling by the Supreme Court has made clear," Perez Toribio stated.