STF annuls law that prohibited neutral language in schools in Rondônia

The Federal Supreme Court (STF) formed a majority, on Thursday night (9), to declare unconstitutional a Rondônia law that prohibited the adoption of neutral language in educational institutions and public tenders in the state. So far, six ministers have already voted to annul the law in a virtual trial that ends this Friday (10).

With the formation of a majority of votes, the Supreme Court gives a favorable opinion to the request made by the National Confederation of Workers in Teaching Establishments (Contee), which argued that the state law carried the risk of “silence teachers”.

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The judgment of the Direct Action of Unconstitutionality (ADI) 7019 began on February 3. The rapporteur of the case, Minister Edson Fachin, voted in favor of the unconstitutionality of the law on the grounds that the state norm would have violated the legislative competence of the Union.

The ministers who have accompanied Fachin so far are Alexandre de Moraes, Ricardo Lewandowski, Cármem Lúcia, Dias Toffoli and Luis Roberto Barroso.

Understand

The state law, enacted in October 2021, guarantees students from Rondônia, in its article 1, “the right to learn the Portuguese language in accordance with the cultural norms and legal teaching guidelines established based on national Education guidelines, by the Orthographic Vocabulary of the Portuguese Language (VolP) and the grammar elaborated under the terms of the orthographic reform ratified by the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries – CPLP”.

Article 3 foresaw the prohibition of neutral language in the curriculum and teaching material of public and private educational institutions and also in public tenders.

However, shortly after the sanction, in November 2021, the teachers’ union triggered the STF against the law. The entity stated that the norm carried “the mark of intolerance, discrimination, denial of diversity, freedom to learn and teach and pluralism of ideas and pedagogical conceptions”.

A few days later, on November 16, 2021, Fachin suspended the law as a precautionary measure, claiming that there were “great defects” in the rule. “The risk of its immediate application, silencing professors, male and female students, is immense and, as such, justifies the exceptional performance of this Court”, declared the minister at the time.

However, lawyer Aécio Flávio Palmeira Fernandes, specialist in Constitutional Law, explained that the Supreme Court’s decision did not discuss whether neutral language is constitutional or not, it only declared that a state of the federation does not have legislative competence to prohibit its use in a classroom. of class.

“By deciding for unconstitutionality, the STF is extending to all States of the Federation the prohibition of editing legal norms that enter the field of competence of the Federal Union, that is, that a State cannot legislate specifically on matters of competence of the Union, regardless of whether the object of the state law is or not about the use of neutral language”, he said. “It is not up to the State of Rondônia to enter the sphere of general competence of the Union, editing a rule on the Portuguese language that, according to art. 13 of the Constitution, is the official language of every nation”, he added.

The expert said that the decision of the Supreme also does not bring a favorable position to the adoption of neutral language. However, he reinforces, neutral language activists may try to use the decision in an attempt to argue that the Judiciary was favorable to the use of the dialect. “The truth is that the movements will distort this decision anyway to implement a narrative, allowing the use of neutral language by Justice, which did not happen”, he highlighted.

“The Constitution itself protects the Portuguese language as the country’s official language, so that the adoption of any change in its use or form can only be carried out by means of a specific law”, stressed the jurist.

Neutral language goes against the grain of linguistic cognition, says expert

Neutral language, advocated by LGBT activists, seeks to eliminate differences between the male and female genders of words. However, experts in the Portuguese language claim that the change in dialect is merely ideological and has no scientific basis.

Recently, Portuguese language teacher and specialist in psychopedagogy Kátia Simone Benedetti explained to People’s Gazette that this change in language is an attempt that goes against the nature of linguistic cognition of speakers of a language in which gender marking is binary. That is, linguistic cognition, formed in the process of language acquisition during childhood, is formed by an “unconscious baggage of abstract knowledge” about the structure of language.

“This knowledge is used naturally and fluently by the brain, without the use of cost-intensive conscious processing systems and/or resources. This spontaneous and unconscious knowledge does not require cognitive costs and that is why we can use language so easily”, stressed the teacher.

But the use of the neutral gender goes against this naturalness, as it requires that it is necessary to change the structure of sentences and use cognitive resources that are not adequate for the spontaneous processing of language. The teacher also explained that gender marking is not something related to human sexuality, but to the structure of the linguistic system, which refers to the system of agreement between the terms of sentences.

On the other hand, Portuguese teacher and author of two best-sellers on the language, Cíntia Chagas, in an interview with People’s Gazette, also showed that the use of neutral language is exclusive, despite the alleged objective being inclusion. “It is presented as something to include people, but in fact it excludes. It excludes the blind, who read through softwareexcludes the deaf, who use lip language, dyslexics and children and adolescents, because it imposes learning difficulties”, he pointed out.