Essay

“The philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) once observed that in most countries certain ideas are recognized as correct and others as dangerous. Teachers whose opinions are not correct are expected to keep silent about them. What opinions, if any, are teachers in your country expected to keep silent about, and to what extent can this be justified?”

In many countries, freedom of expression is not a right and people are expected to behave in a certain way. I think there is where you can find (in most occasions), situations like the one described above.

In Mexico we don´t really have that problem, since the freedom of expression is considered one of the most important articles in our constitution, we are completely allowed to speak our minds. But even then, I think that there are still some “taboo topics” depending in the situation. I´m going to use schools as an example: Since most of the population in my country is catholic, we have many catholic schools. Perhaps people is not as religious as they used to be before, but in those schools, the religious formation is still important and strong, religion is taken as a really serious thing and teachers are expected to respect it, still if they don’t believe in it. There are many topics that students have to learn to have a complete educational formation like methods of protection, abortions, how to plan a family, etc. Catholicism is against them but, they can’t skip those topics because they have to follow the country´s study program, in order to have permission to offer the Mexican education system certificate. So, when they get to those topics, the teachers only can talk about the things the book says, it is forbidden to them to add opinions to their lessons and even worst to say that the agree or disagree with things like for example condoms and abortions.

From my point of view, this is not a problem for my country; it’s a thing that happens everywhere. You have to adapt to the situation depending on where you are and what it is like. If you don´t like a system and you think you can’t adapt to it, then don´t get involved with it.

I want to clarify something: It s a rule in Mexico that public schools have to be secular. Therefore catholic schools are always private and they exist in a smaller percent than the other kinds of schools in Mexico.