Patricia Salas O'Brien: there is a risk of running out of textbooks for schoolchildren

The government of Pedro Castillo knocked on the wall with the conservative sector of Congress, by not observing the law that will allow parents to observe the contents of educational resources. The background is to go against the contents of a gender approach, sexual education and respect for sexual minorities. Nevertheless, the former Minister of Education Patricia Salas highlights another risk in the norm, since any organized group could veto topics that are not to their liking, imposing their point of view and paralyzing the delivery of school supplies to the country’s students.

What is the risk that different groups can intervene in school textbooks?

Let us remember that this law hides behind the idea of quality of educational materials, where groups of parents could veto a school text. There the greatest risk is that students are left without textbooks, which are done from the logic of the public good (…). We run the risk because the law says civil associations, that is, any group could veto this material, but as long as this veto is not lifted, all the production of texts is paralyzed. So at that time there will be no texts. Now there are texts in all schools from initial to secondary, in all areas of learning and free for children and adolescents. That runs the risk of ending.

So any issue could be vetoed. If a civil association does not think that the issue of vaccination, could they veto it?

It could be anything. If a civil association is against having Flag Day, there will be no text saying that such a day is commemorated. And if an organization is against comprehensive sexuality education, boys and girls can be left without comprehensive sexuality education, and so on. Perhaps a group does not agree that the texts say that luminous path was a terrorist or that there was a dictatorship at the time of Odría or Fujimori. Thus we are left without texts and it is very serious to guarantee educational quality.

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Those who promote this norm are conservative groups and the background would be to go against the gender approach.

There is a very big risk there. Because society has to fight against discrimination and build a fairer society. And what are the great discriminations: due to poverty, ethnicity or race and gender. Gender is perhaps a little more serious, because it involves half of the population. And there the gender approach teaches that boys and girls have the same opportunities, with a relationship of mutual respect and appreciation between men and women… Another very delicate element in the gender approach is sex education to prevent unwanted pregnancies and as a field of mutual respect. We know that sexual initiation, especially in women, is not done when the girls are ready, but when the boys decide, because they do a kind of sentimental blackmail. That capacity for mutual respect of having sexual relations or not, is part of comprehensive sexual education, so as not to talk about what sexual violence is and even femicides. And the third issue linked to the gender approach is respect for diversity in sexuality.

He explained well that the gender approach implies, but there are sectors that speak of gender ideology and that indicate that its purpose is to change the sexual orientation of adolescents or promote the beginning of their sexual life.

That is absolutely false, nobody teaches anyone their sexual orientation, that It is a very intimate, personal and individual thing. And what the gender approach seeks is respect, that no one be mocked, demonized, for having a different sexual orientation from the majority…

What legal ways could safeguard that textbooks are not vetoed?

The possibility is that the Congress and the Executive propose another law, or that the citizens propose an action of unconstitutionality. Those seem like the big possibilities.

There was a call for attention from institutions such as the Ombudsman’s Office, but it has not been seen that groups of parents have spoken.

There is a group of parents organized in the Apafas, which are very circumscribed to infrastructure or school support issues on specific issues, but that have become like small mafias, then there is no logic of organization of legitimate parents that helps everyone. And then there are the fathers and mothers of families in general, who have the characteristic of citizenship in general, that they are little interested in matters of public life. On the other hand, there is a certain confidence on the part of the citizenry that the specialized institution knows what it is doing. And that is an abuse of representation that the congressmen are doing, because they are siding with the beliefs of a group of the population and not with the interests and needs of the citizenry as a whole.

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