Leitão Amaro defends teaching more focused on Portuguese

O minister of the Presidency, António Leitão Amaro, today admitted to being surprised by the “lack of shock” regarding the results of PISA and advocated a more focused teaching on essential disciplines such as Portuguese.

“I must say that I am somewhat surprised by the lack of shock in the country with the results of the literacy revealed by the last PISA exams,” said the minister, in Óbidos, stressing “a very significant decline” in the last decade of literacy and reading rates by children and young people.

In an intervention given at the inauguration of the Folio – International Literary Festival of Óbidos, António Leitão Amaro said he was not “a technology denialist”, but alluded to these results to defend “a different response, in the relationship of children with technology, artificial intelligence and social networks”.

For the minister, if instead of “reading slowly”, the relationship between consumers and books is “looking for the summaries generated by artificial intelligence applications”, the country will become “poorer in the ability to give up as a people, to learn from one another”.

Alerting the dangers of “technology dependence”, Leitão Amaro defended government measures such as limiting or banning mobile phones in schools and restrictions on the use of social networks.

He maintained, however, that it is also necessary in schools to “focus more on essential content such as Portuguese”, to the detriment of the “dream of exposing everything, with fluid curricula” that “misses the relative importance of the essential learning of our language, our passport for the relationship with books”.

The intervention of the ruler marked the opening to the public of the 11th edition of Folio, International Literary Festival of Óbidos, and the start of 11 days of programming with 450 authors and creators, including the Nobel Prize in Literature Jon Fosse.

Before the minister shared with Folio’s readers the books that are his “favorite purchase”, Joana Pinho, from the Ler Lazquel bookstore, admitted there was “a certain difficulty” in opening a literature festival, “in talking about books, authors, meetings, when, at the same time, there are people fighting for their home, for their land, for their freedom. People are fleeing the war. There are people who have lost everything. And there is genocide going on.”.

“It’s hard to be here,” he said, “but maybe that’s precisely why we have to be,” he added, establishing the “frontline” of a program that will “talk about territory, migration, borders, memory, democracy, inequality.”.

Themes that will mobilize authors and creators from more than two dozen countries, in this edition of the festival that will also count on the President of the Republic, António José Seguro, in the launch of the Galardão José Pinho, founder of the festival, award that is one of the novelties of this edition, announced today by the vice president of the Óbidos autarchy, Ricardo Duque.

The award, “intended to distinguish personalities or institutions that have contributed particularly relevant to literature, artistic creation, thought and democratization of access to culture”, will honor in this first edition the editor Zeferino Coelho, da Caminho, who, in addition to the Portuguese Nobel Prize José Saramago, published works by authors such as Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, Alice Vieira, Ana Maria Magalhães and Isabel Alçada, among many others.

Folio will run until the 18th, with 13 author tables in which will participate, besides Jon Fosse, the Brazilian writer Ana Maria Gonçalves and two Booker Prize winners: Canadian Yann Martel and Indian Kiran Desai.

Aixa de la Cruz, Catherine Millet, Vera Iaconelli, Kamel Daoud, Leila Slimani, Michael Cunningham, Mohamed El-Kurd, Michela Marzano, Anne Serre, Rachid Benzine, Martin Desrosiers and Niklas Frank are also confirmed.

Among the Portuguese, Valter Hugo Mãe and humorist Ricardo Araújo Pereira stand out.

Organized by the municipality of Óbidos and the municipal company Óbidos Criativa, the festival has as partners the INATEL Foundation and the Livraria Ler Leisquel.