Civil rights groups denounce ideologically based elementary school course

Madrid, Spain, Apr 5, 2006 / 22:00 pm

The civil rights watchdog website in Spain, Hazteoir.org, has denounced a new course for elementary schools which the Ministry of Education has included in an education reform bill, saying the subject material for the course, called “Education for Citizenship,” is nothing more than the promotion of secularism, gender ideology, radical feminism and the culture of death.

Analysts of the website carried out a study of the subject material which the Ministry of Education sent to organizations that are supporting its efforts to pass an education reform bill that is now before the Spanish Senate.
 
Alejandro Campoy, a member of the group, warned that the bill contains proposals that lack the neutrality that “corresponds to a non-sectarian State” and that consist of “very clear elements from specific socio-political ideologies” linked to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual movements.

Ignacio Arsuaga, president of Hazteoir.og, called the course “a direct attack on the consciences of citizens who profess the Catholic faith and, in general, of all citizens who do not share the secular vision of the government.”

Arsuaga said he was hopeful the Spanish Congress could modify the bill and eliminate the course from elementary school curricula.  Such a move, he said, would demonstrate that Socialist legislatures are “willing to dialogue” instead of ignoring yet again “a large segment of society.”  He said the website would organize a campaign to call on parents to object to the material and to refuse to allow their children to attend such classes, and that the organization would offer legal assistance to parents to help “defend in court their right to object.”

Professionals for Ethics, another group working with Hazteoir.org to oppose the new law, issued its own critique of the proposal, saying the course would be a potential instrument for ideological indoctrination in the schools and constitutes an attack on the Constitution, which recognizes the right of parents to educate their children according to their own convictions.