The Ministry of Education has reinforced the contents on terrorism and the memory of its victims that will be studied in Compulsory Secondary Education (ESO) and Baccalaureate. This is how it appears in the latest version of the regulations that regulate both stages (the curricula), to which EL PAÍS has had access. The Government has also introduced changes to reinforce the prevention of sexual extortion over the Internet, make artistic subjects more applied in the Baccalaureate and prevent the autonomous communities from linking the repetition of the course with a number of failures.

The changes occur as a result of the allegations, more than 4,000, that the ministry directed by Pilar Alegría has received in recent months. Both documents will be published shortly in the form of decrees, after the Council of State issues its opinion. The new curricula will begin to be applied in September in odd levels (normally coinciding with the beginning of the cycles, which usually last two courses) and a year later in even levels. These are the main changes.

Terrorism

In previous versions of the curricula, the study of terrorism was included in Geography and History, compulsory subjects in ESO, and in Contemporary World History, optional in Baccalaureate. The General Directorate for Victims of Terrorism, under the Ministry of the Interior, asked Education to give more weight to the issue in the minimum education, which is what the part of the curriculum established by the Government is called (the rest of the contents are set by the autonomous communities: 50% in the case of those with a co-official language and 40% in the rest). And that some specific reference to “terrorism in Spain” should be included, and not just talk about terrorism in a more generic way.

The ministry has responded by introducing its study in the compulsory subject of Education in civic and ethical values ​​in ESO. And also in two other common subjects of the Baccalaureate: Philosophy and History of Spain. In the latter, after the change, the list of contents includes “recognition, reparation and dignity of the victims of violence and terrorism in Spain”, within the thematic section that addresses “democratic memory”.

‘Sextortion’ and pornography

The ESO curriculum addressed digital risks such as cyberbullying and “abuse of connection times” in the first draft. The new wording also includes the danger that being a victim of a sextortion (as blackmail based on the threat of spreading images or other types of sexual content is known). The content has been added to a compulsory subject, Technology and Digitization, which students must take between the first and third year of secondary school (when they are between 12 and 15 years old). And it also appears in an optional ESO room (15 and 16 years old), Digitization. In this matter now also appears, among the risks about which students must be warned, “access to inappropriate content such as pornography or the abuse of the game.”

The request to add these contents has come from the Ministry of Equality. At his request, the prevention of “lgtbiphobia”, as well as xenophobic and racist attitudes, has also been incorporated into the ESO curriculum. These references have been included in the subject of Physical Education, which is compulsory in all ESO courses.

Skip course and grades

The Ministry of Education has added a sentence to the ESO decree to prevent the autonomous communities from trying to link repeating the course and obtaining the compulsory secondary school title with a number of failed subjects, as it has suggested on some occasion that it thought make the Community of Madrid.

The curriculum affirms, as it has done since the first draft, that the decision of whether or not a student passes the course corresponds to the team of teachers depending on the degree of acquisition of competences and the assessment they make of what will be best for them. academic “progress”. The regional Executives may “establish criteria to guide the decision-making of teaching teams in relation” to how they should measure said “degree of acquisition of competences”, but “provided that said criteria do not imply fixing the number or type of the subjects not passed”.

The new version of the curriculum has eliminated the first three words of the following sentence that appeared in the first draft: “In any case, those who have passed the subjects or fields studied or have a negative evaluation in one or two subjects will be promoted.” Although in isolation, having removed “in any case”, the sentence could now be interpreted as meaning that you cannot pass the course if you have more than two failures, from reading the set of articles that regulate promotion it is clear that it is not.

On the other hand, the traditional grading system (insufficient, sufficient, good, remarkable and outstanding) is maintained, but the curriculum no longer establishes that said grades must also be expressed in the evaluation reports with a numerical correspondence, as is the case now.

Most applied artistic subjects

The Ministry has printed a more applied character to the artistic subjects of the Baccalaureate, in order for students to have a more active role and put their creativity into practice. In the Artistic Drawing curriculum (which is given in the first and second year of Baccalaureate) the following paragraph has been incorporated, for example: “Drawing means expressing a vision of the world not only through careful and analytical study that allows representing reality , but also through the imagination, reinventing that reality or representing the inner world of the creative person”. In the case of Artistic Projects (first year subject), the curriculum now states that the subject “combines a conception of art centered on personal expression” with another “in which the realization of the objectives and purposes set out in the execution of an artistic project, influencing, especially, its planning and management”. Its materialization, continues the document, can go “from microprojects that interact with each other to a large project that is carried out throughout the course, going through mixed formulas that are better adapted to the needs and particularities of each group and each educational center ”.

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