Religion and education in Brazil: the “Schools without Party” program as an obstruction to Religious Education and citizen formation

Abstract

This paper aims to present an analysis of the bill that institutes the “Schools Without Party” program (PL 246/2019), in order to indicate how and why this project constitutes an obstacle to the educational action within the school subject “Religious Education” in the elementary school, can be an obstacle to integral formation as established by the Law of Guidelines and Bases of Education in Brazil. For this analysis, we mobilized categories from the field of international law, such as decisions of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the Protocol of San Salvador, as well as categories and theoretical references from the Religious Studies. Firstly, we seek to examine the extent to which the American Convention on Human Rights - referenced in the bill as a central argument in defense of the right of parents that your children receives religious and moral education at school in accordance with that cultivated by their families privately - provides the principles of PL 246/2019. In a second moment, we approach the notion of religion that underlies the project and the impediments accrued from a perspective of religion restricted to belief and practice, disregarding its cultural dimension. Therefore, we seek to point out how this understanding of religion leads to a fragmented and misunderstood comprehension of the Convention, which in addition to endangering fundamental human rights, also suspends basic precepts of education in Brazil.