Opinion column warns against controlling ideas in the classroom
A column published in the Camp de Morvedre edition (the district that includes Sagunto) of El Periódico de Aquí defends curiosity and independent thinking against attempts to control which ideas can circulate in schools.
The phrase "educational police" does not refer to a real institution. It describes a tendency: deciding in advance what people are allowed to learn, which questions are acceptable, and which ones should be avoided. This is the argument of an opinion column published by El Periódico de Aquí (a regional news outlet) in its Camp de Morvedre section, the district that includes Sagunto.
According to the column, education should not follow a single fixed path. Instead, teachers should walk alongside young people as they discover that reality can be understood in different ways. When curiosity is treated as suspicious rather than valuable, it is a sign that this kind of control is taking over learning.
The author uses a simple image: plants that grow in cracks in the pavement do not follow any instructions, they simply search for light. People, the column argues, need guidance and reference points, but they also need room to make mistakes and learn from them. Without that freedom, any educational process stays incomplete.
The text warns that the wish to control ideas is often presented with good intentions — protecting young people, avoiding mistakes, building responsible citizens. But it reminds readers that some of history's biggest restrictions on freedom were also justified as being for the common good. The most effective cages, it says, do not always have visible bars.
Debates about books, languages, history, or technology hide, according to the column, a deeper question: who decides what matters, what should be remembered, and what can be forgotten. This kind of control is sometimes confused with authority, as if educating meant choosing the only ideas allowed to circulate.
The author does not ask readers to rebel for the sake of it, nor to accept every new idea without question. Instead, the column insists on the need to observe, listen, and think independently, even when that is uncomfortable. It also defends the value of different languages and perspectives: each language offers a different way of seeing the world, and when one viewpoint disappears, reality becomes narrower.
The column ends with a central idea: "educational policing" is less a rule than a human temptation — to control instead of accompany, to direct instead of listen, and to impose instead of trust. Against that temptation, it proposes keeping curiosity alive as a form of freedom — not the freedom to say anything, but the freedom to keep an open mind and keep learning throughout life.
This argument connects to a broader debate that also resonates with families and teaching staff across Camp de Morvedre (the district that includes Sagunto): how far a school should limit itself to delivering a fixed syllabus, and how much room it should leave for students to ask uncomfortable questions. When a school, a secondary institute, or a library decides which readings to recommend or which activities to organise, it is making a legitimate pedagogical choice. The risk the column highlights appears when that choice becomes the only option available, leaving no space for competing ideas or for making mistakes.
The reflection also has a practical side for anyone who supports learning outside the classroom: families, after-school activity leaders, or neighbourhood associations that organise talks and workshops. The same temptation to decide in advance what can be said or asked can appear in any space where knowledge is shared, not only in formal schooling. Recognising it, the column argues, is the first step to avoiding it: the point is not to remove every rule or piece of guidance, but to tell the difference between pointing a direction and blocking every other one.
Ultimately, the text invites readers to look inward before looking outward: "educational policing" is not only an external force imposing limits, it is also an internal temptation — the urge to simplify reality down to a single acceptable version. Against that simplification, the column defends the discomfort of unanswered questions as a necessary part of learning, in childhood as much as in adulthood.
The column itself connects this argument to the debate over languages, which has a very direct translation in the Valencian Community: it is not only about which books are read or which questions are allowed, but also about which language is used to teach, ask, and think. Closing off that linguistic plurality, the column argues, narrows the way people understand their surroundings just as much as closing off access to certain ideas does. In a district like Camp de Morvedre, where Spanish (castellano) and Valencian coexist in classrooms, that reflection is not only theoretical: every time a decision is made about which language takes priority in a lesson or an activity, a decision is also being made about which view of the world gets passed on and which one is pushed aside.
According to El Periódico de Aquí.
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