Altman: “Teachers deserve more attention”
Journalist Breno Altman criticizes governments that, with the support of the media, "have strived to make the [state school teachers'] movement invisible" or "offer repressive responses when the situation seems to get out of control"; "The silence was broken when the governor of Paraná, Beto Richa, sent his troops into the streets and injured two hundred protesters. But the curtain of omission is gradually returning to hide one of the most important civil movements of recent times," he says; in his blog on 247, he also demands that the Minister of Education, Renato Janine Ribeiro, "should be eager to forge bonds of solidarity with the teachers."
247 - Teachers in the state school system, whose strikes are multiplying across the country, should receive more attention, argues Breno Altman in a new article in... your blog on 247The journalist calls the main demand for a 13% salary increase mandated by the national minimum wage law for teachers, aimed at compensating for accumulated losses or aligning with other higher education categories, a "pittance" – "compared to the shameful situation of remuneration in Brazilian pre-university education." Read an excerpt from the text:
Governments entangled in these protests, through the media outlets they associate with, have strived to render the movement invisible. Or they offer repressive responses when the situation seems to get out of control. They pretend nothing is happening. They don't open negotiations, they lie about the scope of the strikes, they omit the magnitude of the union meetings. The mainstream media prefers to give more prominence to twenty enraged citizens banging pots and pans against the president at a wealthy man's wedding than to thousands of educators, often tens of thousands, marching through cities or holding formidable assemblies.
Altman says that "the silence was broken when the governor of Paraná, Beto Richa, sent his troops into the streets and injured two hundred protesters" in Curitiba on April 29th, but emphasizes that "the curtain of omission is gradually returning to hide one of the most important civil movements of recent times." According to him, "the timidity of the federal government is also sad," which, "even in the face of the massacre in Paraná, when an outcry of indignation was expected, what was heard was an oblique and murmured reprimand."
The columnist also criticizes the Minister of Education, Renato Janine Ribeiro: "Obviously, the Minister of Education does not have the constitutional power to meet the demands of the strikers, but he should have his hands free and be eager to forge bonds of solidarity with the teachers, taking advantage of the moment for a great national debate on education."
Read here The full text.