Feminism ‘cut from Brazil schoolbooks’
BRAZIL’S president and his senior officials have vowed to revise school textbooks to remove references to feminism, homosexuality and violence against women.
Jair Bolsonaro has also said he wants the military to take over some public schools, as part of what teachers believe is a “nonsensical” approach to education reform.
“One of the goals to get Brazil out of the worst positions in international education rankings is to combat the Marxist rubbish that has spread in educational institutions,” Mr Bolsonaro tweeted on the eve of his inauguration last month.
Mr Bolsonaro, who once said “I’m homophobic, with pride”, has further pledged to review the content of the country’s national high school exam to remove questions on gender or LGBT movements.
He made the announcement in a YouTube video after seeing a question from last year’s exam on a “secret dialect used by gays and transvestites”, called Pajuba, which mixes Portuguese and West African languages.” After the far-right leader took office on January 1, the education ministry published a new set of guidelines for textbook publishers that eliminated references to topics such as sexism.
Following an outpouring of criticism, officials backtracked on the revised texts. But education minister Ricardo Velez Rodriguez nonetheless vowed in his inaugural speech to end the “aggressive promotion of the gender ideology”.