The shameless political activism of the teachers in the ATD

Between August 4 and 8 in Lavalleja, more than 150 teachers from across the country gathered at the latest Technical Teaching Assembly (ATD) for Early Childhood and Primary Education, and the teachers' priorities caused a tremendous stir in society due to their blatant anti-national, progressive, and woke bias.

On August 4, Salsamendi opened the Assembly and set the main priorities for early childhood and primary education: well-being at school, evaluation regulations, the conception of the teaching role and the school, curricular issues, the incorporation of a human rights perspective, comprehensive sex education, and recent history.

Against the Nation

If the general director of Early Childhood and Primary Education, Gabriela Salsamendi, openly described the merit-based system as "anti-democratic" while also expressing her desire to eliminate school grades and the honorable flag bearer system, not much can be expected.

Cecilia Notari, representative of the ATD permanent board, revealed her deep affinity for globalism: she proposed eliminating the requirement for patriotic ceremonies and removing the "Mi bandera" march to promote "interculturality, diversity, and memory in early childhood and primary education" based on human rights, recent history, and a decolonial perspective.

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Against Capitalism and Israel

"The richest 1% in Uruguay appropriates more than 40% of the wealth produced by workers," the teachers said, arguing that education must intervene to correct these inequalities, openly positioning themselves in favor of redistributive policies.

They also emphatically rejected the logic of free competition and merit, valuing a culture of failure and mediocrity: "We do not agree with the project that promotes competency-based teaching, because it is aligned with the demands of the business world regarding what kind of workers it needs."

They also made their position against Israel clear without shame: "The children of Gaza are starving before our eyes... All available evidence indicates that the Government of Israel is using famine as a weapon of war."

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Against the Patriarchy

"The structures of patriarchy and capitalism not only coexist, but are functionally and synergistically articulated in the reproduction of inequalities"; "Women enter the labor market under more precarious conditions... This double workday, paid and unpaid, makes visible the violence jointly exercised by patriarchy and capitalism."

They also pointed out that these inequalities directly impact school life and the construction of "female subjectivity," particularly for racialized, poor, and migrant women.

Against Biology

They emphasized that Comprehensive Sex Education (CSE) can't be optional, but rather an inalienable right and that its absence constitutes a form of rights violation: "CSE is an inalienable right of children and adolescents. Under no circumstances could the violation of this right be a particular option. The State must be the guarantor."

In that sense, they stated that it should be imposed in a mandatory, cross-cutting manner with clear guidelines, coordinating educational policies, teacher training, and institutional planning, where teachers are the main actors in its implementation.

CSE will address gender, class, ethnic, and sexual orientation inequalities in the name of critical subjectivities: "Understood as a theoretical-methodological tool that addresses and seeks to alter social inequalities in sex-gender, ethnic-racial, and class terms..."

Primary school teachers will make children question what they understand as "social norms, power relations, and gender roles": "The term sexuality is not limited only to the anatomical-physiological dimension... it allows for the visibility and questioning of the unequal relationships that structure society."

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Education, Politics, and Power

Nearly twenty years after the 2008 structural reform that enshrined Paulo Freire's pedagogy of the oppressed within the State's legal framework, the current priorities of teachers should not be surprising.

Inclusion, equality, a rights-based perspective, social participation, lifelong education, and cultural diversity respond to the logic of education as liberating praxis, that is, as a political instrument for the social emancipation from the "oppressive regime."

Upon coming to power, the left captured educational institutions: in 2008, with the General Education Law, it imposed Paulo Freire's Marxist pedagogy and began to transmit values, shape meanings, and legitimize social practices functional to its political project.

Since then, in the name of forming critical subjects and human rights, the principle of secularism has been systematically violated in all educational institutions in Uruguay.