“Barkos will force all children from 0 to 6 years to use erotic toys.”
We've started strong. I think, or I want to think, that what has appeared in the press has been a misinterpretation. Skolae talks about the games that are made to get to know our body at early ages – from 3-4 years old – that have traditionally been called sexual (or erotic) games for boys and girls. It's about leveraging and decriminalizing those games to learn how to name things, to learn that our sexual organs have names and to speak clearly about what you can touch and what you can't touch in the public, so everyone knows that something you don't want works wrong and you have to say it. That is what we are talking about. We're not going to take to school anything that has to do with what an erotic game is for adults. That is why, I insist, I want to think it has been a wrong reading, but whoever has done it should know that many educators who are trying to make quality sex education have been insulted.

Incorrect or malicious reading?
I do not know what the intention of the people who have made that interpretation is, and it is because I really would like it to be a mistake. I don't know more, and it's not up to me to make political readings.

They have also been accused of imposing “gender ideology.” We are talking about equality
policies and equality is a fundamental right. Basic rights are not ideology, but something that the whole of society has. All children have the right to an education for equality. The educational community, in this case, is putting the means to this end. The word ideology suffices when we talk about egalitarian education, but talking about gender ideology, perhaps, shows that there is an ideology that is against learning equality. In this case we would talk about ideology and serious things.

They have also said that they are subjects to be taught in families.
No one steals the education the family should give, that is a free space. However, the law obliges the educational community and the department to comply with a number of requirements and contents. Education for equality does not invade the space of families, guarantees that all students receive these contents, as it is their right. Then, each family will determine its limits.

On the road to equality, what is school?
It is, together with the school, the family and the media, a space of socialization that has an enormous responsibility in the transmission of egalitarian models.

But it's also a field for reproducing inequalities.
Of course. If we're intervening with skolae, it's because the mixed school hasn't brought a solution, because it's reproduced the male model. The mixed school has maintained inequality. Yes, nobody intentionally educates on inequality, but the results are there, violence is there, the contributions of women are not recognized. Skolae not only proposes a change in the way we work with students, but also with teachers: How do they target boys and girls? How is the current model maintained? How are gender stereotypes reproduced in school? What we propose is a review of the faculty as an active agent for education.

Beyond an “erroneous” reading, what is Skolae?
Skolae is not a sex education program. It is a comprehensive, well-valued programme, which will help students throughout the education system to form on an equal footing. It has four axes: awareness of inequality, personal autonomy, empowerment and sexual education and good treatment. The program will not provoke anything that is not taught by itself in class, and that is precisely one of its most interesting aspects: it will be done by the teachers of the school, the tutors, those who know the students and know how far they can go. The goal is for students to build their love relationships, their personal strength, their decisions, without gender inequalities. It is essential that girls and boys face violence and avoid abuse and live their sexuality with naturalness, pleasure, happiness, responsibility and protection.

What is the innovator?
It is innovative because it works content progressively and adapted to each age. It is also innovative because it is compulsory, so all students will have to work. It will not depend on the militancy of teachers, and it will not fall this year, let us say, because the centre has decided to work solidarity or recycling rather than equality.

Has the controversy helped to bring the programme into value?
Now it's known in many fields that you wouldn't know for yourself, but criticism is never good at putting an education program in value. Criticism is enough, because it does not focus its gaze. If I could decide, I would decide not to have done all this.