PP calls for new teacher witch hunt
134 cases of alleged harassment in Catalan classrooms being investigated; PDeCAT accused of “victimism”
The PP took a further step in the criminalisation of Catalan teachers yesterday by presenting a proposal against alleged indoctrination in the classrooms that encourages a witch hunt via an anonymous complaints system. According to Andrea Levy, representative of the PP subgroup - the PP has just four MPs in the Catalan Parliament - 134 cases of “indoctrination and harassment” are being investigated in Catalonia. The PP claim there is a “lack of neutrality in Catalan students’ learning process”. Levy neglected to specify what cases they were or what exactly was being investigated. “Catalan students’ spiral of silence is breaking,” she postulated.
The MP even went so far as to accuse Ombudsman Rafael Ribó of turning a blind eye after he concluded that most of these allegations are “inconsistent” and criticised the Spanish government for endorsing complaints from classrooms without checking them first. Ribó has stated that he finds it quite normal and necessary for schools to address the political situation in the country. “One thing is explaining the news or talking about politics, we must talk about what happens in society. What I want is for there to be no political fundamentalism”, Levy said.
The PP’s mechanism for persecuting teachers would be a complaints “mailbox” so that anyone can anonymously incriminate schools or teachers who use the classrooms to indoctrinate students in “nationalist fundamentalism.”
Meanwhile, the Spanish Minister of Education, Íñigo Mendez de Vigo, boasted of having “taken care of” Catalan schooling via the opening of new schools. When asked by a PDeCAT MP about the systematic attack on the Catalan school system and teaching staff, the minister called it “victimism.”