The four royal academies that Ayuso has designated to “review” textbooks deny having signed an agreement to do so

Sectarian material, ideological knowledge or social engineering. This is what the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has promised – on more than one occasion – to “review” and eliminate from textbooks. She did it before the start of last year and she has repeated it on her return to school this year, although with a novelty: the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), those of History, Fine Arts and Exact Sciences “will help” to supervise the manuals. The problem: they lack powers and only the educational inspectorate is authorized by law to do so. The four institutions have assured EL PAÍS that they have no evidence that an agreement has been put in place with the regional government to carry out the task and some even found out about the announcement through the media.

In May 2022, Ayuso presented – during a PP event in Jerez de la Frontera – the measure to “end the indoctrination” of the Ministry of Education: “We are going to carry out a detailed and urgent review of all textbooks in the Community, with an order that we are going to give to our educational inspection”. He also announced that they would remove all texts containing “sectarian material.” A little more than a week later, asked about it in the Assembly, the president acknowledged that the inspection had not detected “anything relevant” in the review of 180 books. Days later, she encouraged by letter to the centers not to use the manuals the educational law of the Government of Pedro Sánchez (Lomloe) and appealed to the Supreme Court the Baccalaureate curriculum for considering it “full of mantras of the left”. She was the only regional president to do so and this July the body dismissed the appeal.

We are going to work to end the indoctrination that the Ministry of Education intends.

We will review the new textbooks for the next 2022/23 academic year through the Educational Inspection Service of the Community of Madrid.

⁦@IdiazAyuso⁩ pic.twitter.com/P5HPboMMNL

— PP Community of Madrid (@ppmadrid) May 31, 2022

A year later, the promise has not changed, but there is no longer any mention of the educational inspection. “We are going to make agreements with the Royal Spanish Academy, the Royal Academy of History, the Academy of Fine Arts and the Academy of Exact Sciences to help us in the revision of the manuals, so that they are based on effective and rigorous knowledge, not ideological or social engineering”, Ayuso reported last Wednesday. This newspaper has contacted the four institutions and, except for what they saw in the media, none were aware of the initiative.

The Ministry of Education has not responded to questions about what the role of the royal academies will be, what the agreements with them will consist of or when they will be carried out. A spokesperson points out that “territorial inspection services routinely review textbooks” to check whether they comply with the curriculum, the ages of the students and constitutional values.

“So far the RAE has not received that request,” say sources from the Royal Spanish Academy. In that of Fine Arts, they indicate that no one from the regional Administration has contacted the director or the vice-rector. Arturo Romero, professor and academic of the Royal Academy of Sciences (RAC) explains that the institution of which he is a part -and also others- signed a generic agreement with the Community of Madrid at the beginning of 2022. “But aimed at teachers”, He qualifies by phone, focused on informative sessions where they are taught the work of the royal academy. “It does not include anything related to textbooks, only the possibility of carrying out collaborations that we both agree on,” he says. And he adds: “We have no powers in educational matters.”

What affects the most is what happens closest. So you don’t miss anything, subscribe.

Subscribe

It is also pointed out by Isabel Galvín, general secretary of the CC OO Madrid Teaching Federation. “The contents of the textbooks are perfectly regulated and the real academies are external to the educational system. The exclusive and fully defined competence in the constitutional framework to review textbooks lies with the inspection service,” she explains. This is included in the Organic Education Law of 2006 and none of the subsequent ones has altered it: “The supervision of textbooks and other curricular materials is the responsibility of the educational administrations and will constitute part of the ordinary inspection process carried out by the Administration” .

Ayuso’s announcement has surprised the educational inspectorate. “It is as if the Minister of Labor said that from now on the inspections will be carried out by an external body, because she does not like the verdicts that the competent body gives. Or as if they gave the Treasury inspector help ”, complains an inspector, who has worked in the Community for more than 10 years and prefers not to say her name. The official explains that “nothing has ever been detected in any book” and that it is usual for a copy to be reviewed for specific reasons, for example, if the Administration denounces part of the content. “It is impossible to supervise everything, because there are 160 inspectors for the entire region. What reaches us is a tiny part,” she says.

The content of the textbooks is governed by the current school curriculum, explains a spokesperson for the National Association of Book and Teaching Material Publishers (Anele). In this case, the curriculum that Lomloe marks. “It establishes the minimum teachings that require 50% of the school hours for the Autonomous Communities that have a co-official language and 60% for those that do not have them,” he points out. That is, Madrid can use the remaining 40% to include its own content. “Measuring what is considered ideological content is complex,” adds the spokesperson. The legislation only states that the texts must respect the values ​​of the Constitution and scientific rigor. “The reviews that have been carried out, including in the Community of Madrid, and the subsequent reports conclude that there has been nothing that contravenes the legislation,” he confirms.

Subscribe here to our daily newsletter about Madrid.

#royal #academies #Ayuso #designated #review #textbooks #deny #signed #agreement