EUROPE/SPAIN - Education to Citizenship: “Every responsible family has the obligation to refuse this school subject. This is a matter of freedom, to defend the basic and highest right to educate our children in keeping with our own principles”

Madrid (Agenzia Fides) - As from September every school in Spain will include the new Education to Citizenship subject as part of the compulsory curriculum set by the Ministry of Education. The subject involves the formation of the pupil's moral conscience according to the Professionals for Ethics Association. In Andalusia the Association viewed an example of the contents of the subject and identified concepts which are part of moral education including: diverse family situations, overcoming homophobic prejudice, refusal of discrimination with regard to gender, moral dimension of human beings, moral pluralism and rejection of moral intolerance, process of socialisation of gender.
Apart from the contents, the Association denounces discussion on the subject “based on what is moralising and indoctrinating. For this reason many parents have presented the formula with objection of conscience refusing to let their children attend these lessons”.
Luis Carbonel, president of Concapa (National Confederation of Catholic Parents and Pupils) said " every responsible family has the obligation to refuse this school subject. This is a matter of freedom, to defend the basic and highest right to educate our children in keeping with our own principles". He denounced: "the government uses this subject to usurp the parents role to educate the consciences of their children". Therefore “increasing numbers of families reject this arrogance on the part of the government which intends to colonise the souls of our children, which rejects dialogue and intends to impose its own model of citizen, insensible to the value of the freedom and dignity of every human person". Concapa called on the Ministry to suspend this subject and enter into dialogue with representatives of parents to agree on the contents of the subject and its non-compulsory nature. Otherwise "another major demonstration to demand freedom of teaching will be inevitable " he said.
Benigno Blanco, president of the Spanish Family Forum wrote a letter to inform the European Parliament that "the government of Spain is in conflict with the families, not with the Church, since the latter simply supported civil initiatives undertaken by parents to protect their freedom". Blanco says Spanish families are not against the subject as such, but they object to some of its contents which they say are "incompatible with the exercise of parents freedom of formative responsibility". (RG) (Agenzia Fides 24/7/2007; righe 31, parole 413)