In the name of laicism. The limits to academic freedom in the Uruguayan transition: a debate, seven pages, an editorial and a summary

Abstract

The beginning of the 1988 school year, in the midst of Uruguay’s democratic transition, was the focus of two conflicts that dominated the debates in the educational field and both in the “name of laicism”: on the one hand, the confrontation between the governing bodies of public education for the approval of programs (mainly History and Geography) and, in the middle of this dispute, the accusation of a teacher for “violating laicism” made by the Vice President of the Republic Enrique Tarigo. This complaint ends with the summary of the teacher Martha Averbug accused of using material in her classes that did not follow the general orientation of the study plans and that “were not an example of laicism.” In this text we propose to analyze how the denunciation of “violation of laicism” operates as a concept that allows it to be used to denounce and delegitimize, before public opinion, any “opposition”, which is mobilized to control and put the academic freedom of professors. In this way, during the democratic transition, suspicion and the supposed need for surveillance of the teaching profession are reinstated, continuing one of the worst legacies of the dictatorship that devastated Uruguay between 1973 and 1984. To carry out the work were taken as sources of the Consejo Directivo Central, the Consejo de Educación Secundaria, the summary of Professor Martha Averbug, and the press.