The National Government has announced its intention to modify Argentina’s Education Act to penalize “indoctrination” in the classrooms. The proposal was questioned by education sectors that believe that offering a telephone line to denounce such activities are a “threat” to teachers and that these measures are meant to “destroy public schools”.
Last Thursday, presidential spokesperson Manuel Adorni announced that the government will send a bill to Congress to modify Articles 11 and 126 of the National Education Act with “the aim of penalizing indoctrination in schools”.
Adorni also announced the creation of a “channel of communication” so “parents and students can denounce political activity that does not respect freedom of speech”.
In turn, Argentina’s Confederation of Education Workers (Ctera, by its initials in Spanish) expressed its concern over the initiative and denounced “the repression, censorship and ideological persecution that the government is carrying out against educators all across our country”.
“In addition to all the measures of austerity, withdrawing financing to schools, worsening working conditions and violations of social rights that the national government has already put into practice, now educators are accused of indoctrinating students, and families are encouraged to denounce ideological indoctrination to a telephone line, like it happened under the government of President Mauricio Macri”, Ctera said in a statement.
The statement also emphasized that education in Argentina “is adrift; the Ministry of Education was demoted to a Secretariat, without an integral educational program, without proposals to improve the quality of education, all we find are measures to destroy public schools”.
In relation to the initiative, UCR Congresswoman Danya Tavela said, in conversation with Somos Télam, that “first, we need to define what we think indoctrination is, and to which education level we are referring” and added that “when one seeks to generate critical thinking, obviously one expresses opinions that, in the case of high schools, very often create the possibility of a debate with students”.
Tavela, former Secretary of University Policies during the Macri administration, also said that “that is why it is key to have well-trained educators who can generate critical thinking, discussions, debates, suggest alternative readings, to incite reflection on different topics”.
From the Workers’ Party, national Congresswoman Romina del Pla said that “we are against indoctrination. Educators need to teach the prescribed content. Educators don’t make up the content they teach. Content is determined by the authorities of each district”.
Flavio Buccino, member of Argentines for Education, said that “the government, and Javier Milei in particular with his anarcho-capitalist perspective, thinks that the State should not exist. They are fighting a cultural battle in the heart of the education system, in which they suggest that the State should not define the content that children learn”.
Regarding the launching of a telephone line to denounce alleged indoctrination, Boccino said: “I think it’s horrifying to put in the minds of students and their parents the possibility of an accusation as a core tool for politics. I think it will create huge problems and one of them will be self-censorship, which will harm the educators’ potential, because they will be more worried about what people might think of his teaching than about focusing on teaching in the classroom”.