Madam Director:
It is very regrettable to learn of the decision of a school board in the Canadian province of Ontario to destroy a total of 5,000 books and comics – through recycling, burial or burning – on the grounds that they spread “negative stereotypes” about the native population. The past cannot be judged with the moral principles of the present because, as the professor and National History Prize winner, Sol Serrano, warns, in that case history would have to be erased in its entirety. These types of measures have long affected secondary and higher education in the West and include censorship, dismissals and attacks on people and institutions that reject these cancellations. To think that an educational institution should protect its students from ideas that some may consider offensive is to repudiate the legacy of Socrates, who defined himself as the gadfly that goaded the sleeping Athenian people. He thought that his job was to interrupt and question his fellow citizens so that they would reflect on their own beliefs and change those that they could not defend. The culture of cancellation is the enemy not only of freedom, but of education. To generate strong critical thinking, students must confront different ideas, in order to stimulate them to learn to think better. Destroying books is a setback and a sign that we have not learned one of the biggest mistakes of the past.
Martín Durán / FPP Concepción
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