Madalen Goiria has written an interesting follow-up to the Catalan parliament session that dealt with the proposed amendment 170 to the Education Law, which would give parents the right to take children out of primary school and educate them at home. She notes the analogy between this “exceptional” right and that of conscientious objection to military service, and suggests that although unconstitutional–it would breach national organic law regarding the so-called right to education–it is unlikely to be challenged by the Catalan socialists’ distinctly nervous allies in central government or by the PP, substantial sections of which want to find a way to duck out of compulsory schooling in Catalan and of political indoctrination disguised as education for citizenship.

Another favourable factor which she omits to mention is that José Montilla, the Catalan president, has in his wisdom told the national constitutional court that it does not have the moral right to overrule Catalan government policy. Spain is now quite well known for its enthusiasm for competition among legal orders, but while it is fairly simple for Israel or the US to brush off attention-seeking Spanish judges’ somewhat surprising claims to jurisdiction over Gaza or Iraq, there appears to be no fail-safe mechanism for resolving an accumulation of grave internal disputes of this type–unless we include the traditional remedy of enthusiastic and bloody civil conflict every few decades. Kalebeul’s home schooling, if and when, will certainly include basic firearms training and instruction in stockade-building and potato storage, global warming permitting.

Tags: Catalan, Catalonia, constitution, home schooling, language policy, montilla, PP, PSC, PSOE, Spain
Categories: Empires, rulers and warfare, Languages, Les bourgeois, The law court

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