PP calls for new teacher witch hunt

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.”