Two civil society organizations have launched a mobile unit traveling the main streets of Mexico City with the message “Classrooms are for learning, not for indoctrination!” in order to make known “society’s complaint due to the illegal indoctrination promoted by the federal government.”
The campaign, led by the National Union of Parents (UNPF) and the CitizenGO platform, demands that educational institutions stop using the controversial school textbooks developed for the 2023-2024 school year by the Mexican government under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
The organizations maintain that distributing the textbooks was illegal because they were changed without either the parents or the educational community having been consulted about the content as stipulated by Article 48 of the General Law on Education.
The online petition calls out López Obrador for ordering the distribution of the textbooks throughout the country in violation of a judicial order to halt printing the books until the consultation could take place in accordance with the law.
The petition calls the distribution of the textbooks “arbitrary, illegal, and authoritarian.”
Furthermore, the UNPF and CitizenGo make the accusation that the educational material has the objective of “forming party members for the [president’s] political cause. They don’t want to form Mexicans with values or competitive abilities to move Mexico forward,” the petition states.
At the kickoff event for the truck, Karla García Escudero, a representative of the National Union of Parents, and Edith Juárez from the Citizen Initiative platform said the truck will travel the streets carrying a message to “demand that our children be the center of scientific education and not a pretext for political, much less ideological, issues.”
They also announced that through the CitizenGO platform they are collecting signatures from all those who want to join this cause. “To date, there are more than 118,000 of us compatriots who have freely given our support” through various means.
They stressed that “as long as the federal government and state governments continue to act illegally,” parents and citizen organizations will continue “acting together through public complaints, through legal means, and with signature collection campaigns.”
“Children are the future of our country and they need to be educated on a scientific basis and not with ideological ideas. That’s why we are and will continue to fight together, parents and citizens,” the organizers said at a press conference.