A manifesto, driven by over thirty social entities and supported by nearly a thousand citizens, has been presented to express rejection of section 3.4 of the Instruction from the Ministry of Education of the Government of the Canary Islands. The signatories believe this directive on the organization and functioning of non-university educational centers could open the door to ideological censorship in the archipelago's public education system.
The document highlights the imprecise wording of the section, warning it could be used as "the perfect excuse for the establishment of clear ideological censorship in the form of a covert parental pin". According to the collectives, this would prevent publicly funded educational centers from including complementary activities related to the defense of the rights of vulnerable individuals and groups, under the pretext of not complying with the ideological neutrality required by the instruction.
The necessity of reinforcing educational content with complementary activities that promote values such as equality, diversity, and human rights is emphasized. The signatories fear that these aspects could be "pursued or disallowed" due to the ambiguity of the instruction issued by the Ministry of Education.
The signatory entities and individuals demand an express clarification from the Ministry of Education. They seek to ensure that complementary activities related to the fundamental right to equality and non-discrimination are not subject to prior censorship, excluding them from those that supposedly breach ideological neutrality.
In their view, "education in the Canary Islands cannot be subject to censorship for ideological reasons derived from ambiguous instructions". For this reason, they have promoted this statement, the signatures of which will be formally submitted to the regional executive.
Among the signatory entities are the 8M Feminist Platform of Tenerife, the Forum Against Gender Violence of Tenerife, the Feminist Collective Women in Encounter, the Domitila Hernández Association, the Mercedes Machado Feminist Association, the Canarian Association of Students (ACE), the STEC Union of Canary Islands Education Workers, the Canarian Foundation for Critical Thinking La Colectiva, the Canarian Foundation TAMAIMOS, and various LGBTIQA+ entities such as Diversas, Aperttura, Libertrans, Equidades, Caminar Intersex, Iris, and the State LGTBI+ Federation.
The manifesto's initiators invite citizens and other social collectives to continue adding signatures via a provided link.
For its part, the Ministry of Education defended the instruction last week, assuring this newspaper that it is being applied "without incidents" and aims to prevent the "politicization" of schools. They cite a conference given by Rudy Ruyman at an institute last academic year as an example. They state that the instruction protects management and teaching teams when programming or being asked to give talks or lectures in educational centers that may not align with the initially expected content or are expressed with a bias that could directly influence students' perception of certain topics, at a particularly sensitive stage of their development.
