Madrid, Spain, Sep 14, 2007 / 09:03 am
In an interview with the Spanish weekly “Alba,” the secretary general of the Spanish Federation of Religious Teachers, Father Manuel de Castro, admitted for the first time that the controversial course Education for Citizenship should be kept out of all schools and he asked officials to accept the objections of parents who do not want their kids to be taught “moral principles they do not share.”
After months of refusing to take a position on the issue, Father de Castro told Alba, “I would like to see public schools honor the objections and the ministry reverse its direction.”
Although he said the Ministry of Education’s decision was “acceptable,” he explained that some books in the course are not, and that he understood the objections of many parents. He asked that their objections be honored.
According to Father de Castro, the controversy has sprung up over “the attempt to introduce moral principles that are not shared” by parents of the students, and added that Education for Citizenship is the secular opposite of the times in which “Catholic morality was imposed even through law.”