The exclusion of the subject “Moral and Religious Education” from the curriculum of public schools, proposed in the preliminary election program of the Livre, this Saturday caused some controversy among the members of the XIII Party Congress.
At the main meeting of the Livre, which began this Saturday and ends on Sunday in Porto, party members and supporters are discussing and voting on the electoral program for the legislative elections, the first version of which includes the exclusion of the topic of moral and religious education, which is optional – “from the curriculum public school programs.
The proposal states that “religious formation should be left to the discretion of families and carried out in their respective religious communities, respecting the principle of secularism in public schools as enshrined in the constitution.”
The first version of the electoral program was agreed upon by party leaders and included input from activists as well as civil society, to which more than 100 proposals for amendments were submitted.
Among these proposals, there is one presented by Manuel Beiran dos Reis, who proposes to delete this paragraph completely.
In one speech at the congress, the member, who said he was a PS activist until 2015, argued that “the secularism of schools is perfectly compatible with a plurality of religions, not just one, but a plurality” and felt that this should not be a priority proposal for parties.
The topic caused some controversy among members and supporters present in the Almeida Garrett Municipal Library auditorium, with leader Patricia Gonsalves advocating for the subject to be removed from the public school curriculum.
“We support that receiving religious education is a personal choice, it is a family choice, the state has nothing to do with it, children should not choose whether to study religion in public school or not, they should study other things, and there is something to learn here “, he said.
Manuel Reis took the podium again to argue, citing the law of religious freedom and saying that “when there are groups of students who want to go to [religião] Whether Catholic or Evangelical, the school organizes its students according to the rules of religious freedom.”
In the same vein, Ismael Eduardo said that he found Livre to be his “home” and ideals that he “learned a lot from being religious.”
“I have chosen to always have discipline, and in my freedom, in my concept of freedom, I must be able to choose whether or not to have this discipline. In the religion and morality that I had, I never talked about faith, I never talked about Hail Marys, I never talked about anything like that, I talked about the history of religion and even more deeply about morality, about how a person must behave in society,” he said.
On the other hand, leader Diana Barbosa, a member of the Livre Assembly, responded that “the problem is not religious discipline and morality talking about different religions, the problem is that religion is present in public schools.”
“Public school is about learning subjects and being a good citizen. The rest we can do somewhere else and never with government funding,” he said.
During the election debate, Filipe Martins took to the podium and declared that he was “a leftist, a social democratic and also a libertarian.”
“And yet, what I see in the program is State, State, State, State. (…) I think we need to be a little more pragmatic and understand how things work,” he warned.
During the afternoon discussion, several members mentioned that they had joined the party after the resignation of Prime Minister António Costa, which led to the dissolution of parliament and the President of the Republic calling early legislative elections.
One of them was Paulo Simões, a retired military man, who mentioned the fact that Livret had never included the topic of national defense in his electoral programs, and suggested, for example, the integration of foreigners into the ranks of the military.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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