Lula says that “it is not the obligation of the MEC” to take care of civic-military schools

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) publicly commented this Friday (14) on the decision by the Ministries of Education and Defense to close the National Program of Civic-Military Schools, taken on Wednesday (12).

The program was one of the main flags in the education area of ​​former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) and the decision to close it has been questioned by entities and states, which announced the maintenance of the format with their own resources.

“Just yesterday Camilo [Santana, ministro da Educação] announced the end of civic-military education, because the MEC is not obligated to take care of it. If each state wants to create [escolas cívico-militares], which create. If each state wants to continue paying, let it continue”, he said during the ceremony of sanctioning the law that resumes the Mais Médicos program.

Lula stated that the ministry “has to guarantee equal civil education for each and every child of a Brazilian male or female”.

The speech was preceded by a series of criticisms of the former president’s government, which he claims to have dismantled dozens of public policies since 2018 and which he has already had to recreate 37 of them, such as Popular Pharmacy, school lunches, readjustment of servers, among others.

Since announcing the end of the program, at least 18 states and the Federal District have decided to maintain the format, such as Minas Gerais, Goiás, Paraná, São Paulo, among others.

There are currently 216 institutions in the country that operate on the model of civic-military schools, based on shared management between military and civilians. In all, the institutions serve 192,000 students in 23 states and the Federal District.