Today happened another teachers protest in Lisbon. Apparently the current minister of education has made some changes that are not pleasant from the teachers point of view. As an example, she instated that teachers shall only progress in their careers if, under some kind of evaluation system, they perform with a grade of “Excellent”. So far so good, the problem is there are quotas, meaning that even if the teachers of a given school all have “excellent” grades, only 5% will progress in their careers. So, the changes in career progression are currently seen by teachers as a measure to reduce costs and not to improve education.
I have personally seen one of these protests, the first one, with about 120 000 teachers protesting in the streets of Lisbon. It was the greatest exercise of democracy I have ever seen. Unfortunately the minister continues to refuse accepting the teachers point of view.
Statistics from protests held in Portugal are also another curious matter for the current Portuguese government. it seems that the “official” number of protesters is given by the real number of protesters divided by two. Also, if too many people come to protest, police squads are sent to the city perimeter to prevent more people of entering the city to protest. No doubt, this government has a distorted sense of democracy.
Now, who is this minister? Maria de Lurdes Rodrigues, also known as “LULU”, has been a perfect example of how you should govern if you are living in a dictatorship. I remember that when she visited a school, students threw some eggs at her car, and a few weeks later she sent some men to interrogate the students (!).
This video shows her in one of these school visits. You can see that some students are protesting and she answers back in a very immature tone:
I have personally seen one of these protests, the first one, with about 120 000 teachers protesting in the streets of Lisbon. It was the greatest exercise of democracy I have ever seen. Unfortunately the minister continues to refuse accepting the teachers point of view.
Statistics from protests held in Portugal are also another curious matter for the current Portuguese government. it seems that the “official” number of protesters is given by the real number of protesters divided by two. Also, if too many people come to protest, police squads are sent to the city perimeter to prevent more people of entering the city to protest. No doubt, this government has a distorted sense of democracy.
Now, who is this minister? Maria de Lurdes Rodrigues, also known as “LULU”, has been a perfect example of how you should govern if you are living in a dictatorship. I remember that when she visited a school, students threw some eggs at her car, and a few weeks later she sent some men to interrogate the students (!).
This video shows her in one of these school visits. You can see that some students are protesting and she answers back in a very immature tone:
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