The teachers in Madrid have turned the last weeks to boost individual and collective actions on genocide against Gaza despite the assignment of the administration's censorship. These prohibitions of Palestinian flags and symbols, backed by the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, have aroused in teachers the indignation for the violation of their freedoms, which has promoted their creativity to overcome censorship and continue to educate in peace and human rights values.
This week, in which the majority of unions call teachers to protest “the right to denounce the genocide”, there will be educational stoppages on Friday from 11.30 to 13.30 and from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., while thousands of students took to the streets on Thursday convened by the student union.
In Madrid's schools and institutes, the actions of teachers and students in favor of a fire proliferate. The public schools San Ignacio and San Isidro and Joaquín Costa, both of Arganzuela (Madrid), have decorated the building with drawings and creations of the students where you can see numerous watermelons, Palestinian flags and messages such as' No to War 'or' Joaquín Costa vs. Netanyahu '.
A young teacher who prefers not to reveal his name tells this newspaper that the problems with the direction of his school, located in a town 30 kilometers from Madrid, began from the first cloister of the course. Several teachers of the center decided to take a picture to show their solidarity with Palestine and the rejection of genocide. This teacher ensures how they were threatened with disciplinary files by the management team and how it initiated a debate with the director about the political nature or not of these actions. “I make comparisons with Nazism or the Terraplanists,” says this teacher.
After Ayuso's words, who accused these professionals of “trying to indoctrinate” for speaking to human rights students and the origin of the conflict, the actions went to more. The response of this teacher and his classmates was to “fill everything with watermelons.”
We have the obligation to arouse the awareness of critical thinking in students
Lola Cabrera
— Professor
The case of an economy professor at the Santo Domingo de Alcorcón (Madrid) Institute, which they threatened to expedite by bringing to class a football shirt of the Chilean team Palestinian sports team was also sounded. This Tuesday the center's address has reversed and issued an internal letter in which it informs teachers who can “feel free” to show their opinions “freely” with the “only limit of respect” mutual. “The strength of the classmates and the trade union and media strength,” celebrates the professor, Guillermo López, in conversation with eldiario.es.
Another high school teacher from the same town, Lola Cabrera, explains how her particular action in protest for the genocide and the attempt to veto the Ministry consists of starting each of her philosophy classes reading 28 names of the list of more than 18,000 children killed in Gaza, in addition to dedicating a complete class with each group to explain the origin of the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1947. They are “proposing this topic as a topic of debate and study” in each of their subjects. “In addition to the defense of human rights, we have the obligation to arouse the awareness of critical thinking,” he explains.
In their institute, IES Jorge Guillén, they organized on Tuesday a didactic talk for ESO fourth students taught by Alcorcón with Palestine, a local association in defense of the Palestinian people and human rights.
Other administrations governed by the PP such as the Madrid City Council are supporting the decision of the Government of Ayuso and eliminating any trace of Palestinian flags in the public space, as happened with the great flag painted by children of a Malasaña school with chalk in the Plaza de Dos de Mayo. Despite the recurring and fast municipal cleaning, the insistence of children has left images of the colors red, black, white and green flooding the square.
T -shirts with watermelons, kufiyas, flags … All kinds of protest symbology has traveled the educational centers of the Community of Madrid since on September 18, a series of verbal threats and indications of the Ministry of Education and the Inspection were known, as well as the managerial teams, to stop and silence the samples of support and the protests against the Israeli genocide in Gaza. The less -teaching teachers platform launched, that same day, a campaign to call on Madrid teaching to go to class carrying Palestinian symbols such as watermelon, kufiya or the colors of the flag. “We are not going to shut up in the face of genocide. Long live public education, live Palestine free!” He encouraged less teaching in the statement.
On the other hand, a hundred associations of mothers and fathers of public and concerted centers signed a text of condemnation of the “harassment of the Ministry of Education to Teaching Teams and families for showing their support to the Palestinian population”. In this statement, signed by AMPAS of colleges and institutes throughout the region, they demand that the freedom of expression of the entire educational community is respected. ” “Educating in human rights is not indoctrination, it is one of the basic principles of our educational system and of our entire democratic system. Therefore, we will support and encourage those initiatives that, both inside and outside the educational centers are carried out, to raise their voice against this genocide,” they add.
Unions, AMPAS and students have mobilized and convened concentrations this week, in which the rectification of the IES Prado Santo Domingo has been a “success” for the fight against censorship, according to the threatened professor. The CCOO, CGT, STEM, UGT, CNT, base commissions, workers' solidarity, class union alternative have called educational stoppages for Friday, October 3 for “the right to denounce the genocide” in Madrid educational centers.