One of these days, we were confronted with the great controversy surrounding the existence of a book on Identity and Family. For the heralds of goodness and purity, almost more serious than the existence of this work and the defence of plurality of opinion, was the statement made by the former Prime Minister, Pedro Passos Coelho, during the speech presenting the book, in which he said that in Portugal we were witnessing “A Sovietisation of education”.
This statement generated indignation, shock and almost a plea of insanity on the part of its author.
Personally, I was astonished by the lack of critical capacity regarding Portuguese education, or perhaps what is at stake is the lack of knowledge of what Soviet education was like.
In fact, Soviet education was deeply political, aimed at indoctrination in communist ideas from childhood, the purpose was to create toy soldiers.
In schools, supposed war and labor heroes were taught. They were taught not to stand out, because they were not individuals, but part of a people, the Soviet people. The priority was always public service.
The Soviet view rejects the idea that the education of young people should belong to the family and deeply despises the figure of women as mothers, wanting to quickly free them for work.
Is it really so absurd to draw a parallel between this system and what is happening in Portugal today?
In primary education, Portuguese children have one of the highest workloads in Europe, around 25 hours per week. Those who work in education know that children become distracted, irritable and tired, but school and its extracurricular activities are often the solution for families who, not by choice but due to lack of freedom of choice, cannot accompany their children.
As far as subjects are concerned, ideology is constantly implicit in the programs and in certain situations the family’s role in education is even replaced by moral values, as is the case with the mandatory and assessed subject of Citizenship. The subject of Citizenship, which in itself already represents a grotesque imposition of values decreed by the State, also assesses students based on their ability to repeat these values.
Bill after bill, MPs continue to approve the imposition of gender ideology without consulting families on whether they have this desire, whether they are comfortable with this issue being addressed at school or whether they prefer to do so within the family. There is no choice, there is imposition.
At school, students are taught to see History as biased towards one of the camps, the 25th of November is practically omitted and pushed to irrelevance.
Only as an adult did I learn, for example, that D. Pedro IV was not necessarily good, nor D. Miguel necessarily bad. The school read history and chose to present these two protagonists to me as “good” and “bad”, and I didn’t even question it for years, even though I was a monarchist and was paying attention. I simply needed the association to draw my own conclusions. This basically sums up my criticism regarding the content: Young people are not taught to think. They present the already prepared version.
Individual talents are ignored. All students are assessed using the same standard and exposed to the same stimuli. Equality!
I ask again, is it really so absurd to talk about the “Sovietization of education”?