Introduction
This research article is focused on the analysis of the different educational proposals of the far-right parties that had significant representation in the European elections of June 2024. Thus, their electoral programmes, campaign documents and public statements on education are studied in order to investigate their educational project and the impact this project has on global citizenship education (GCED).
The term global citizenship education was formally introduced by UNESCO in 2012 as part of its education programme, though debates around global citizenship and global education existed long before (Pulido-Montes and Lorente Rodríguez, 2024). In fact, the construction of a sense of belonging within a common humanity linked to mutual respect, peace and understanding has been promoted for years by governments, institutions and international advocacy organisations such as UNESCO. From peace education at the end of the nineteenth century to the more holistic vision of GCED, its historical evolution reflects an attempt to build peaceful societies governed by understanding, tolerance, peaceful conflict resolution and human rights. Its inclusion in the Sustainable Development Goals has made GCED more relevant, as Pulido-Montes and Lorente Rodríguez (2024) argue, but its integration into education systems is still in its early stages.
In a context of the rise of right-wing extremism, GCED is more vital than ever. GCED strengthens civic education, global understanding, human rights, fundamental freedoms and values of peace, inspiring learners of all ages to contribute positively to their local and global communities in an increasingly interdependent and eco-dependent world (Díez-Gutiérrez, 2024). In this world, any consensus on education for development, human rights, sustainability, peace and intercultural education is being challenged by the extreme right. Extreme right-wing policies range from the exclusion of diversity in curricular contents of different countries in Europe and America to the elimination of the Department of Education in the United States (Ravitch, 2025).
Unlike the concept of citizenship, where rights and responsibilities are associated with belonging to a particular nation or state, global citizenship is based on the idea that human beings are connected not only to a country, but also to a wider global community. Of course, this concept remains under construction and is subject to various critiques, agendas and interpretations (Aguilar-Forero et al., 2020; Akkari and Maleq, 2020; Cho and Mosselson, 2018; Pais and Costa, 2017; Pashby et al., 2020). However, it is difficult to generate a conscious and active citizenry capable of self-organising, opposing resistance, proposing alternatives and finding different paths to current capitalism. In fact, the present multidimensional crisis attacks the foundations of coexistence and the very conditions that make life on the planet possible (Boni-Aristizábal et al., 2020; Díez-Gutiérrez, 2024; Santamaría-Cárdaba et al., 2022). This global approach, marked by a critical and decolonial orientation, seems to contrast with the socio-educational postulates of the extreme right. The latter considers those who are different as enemies, and the struggle against diversity is regarded as one of the most radical cultural battles present in their programmes, proposals and discourses.
Thus, it is necessary to analyse whether the far right’s educational proposals have an impact on GCED, as these seem to clash with the latter’s approach to the environment, the consolidation of peace, and the confrontation of racism, sexism, xenophobia and so forth. Moreover, whether these far-right proposals may ultimately endanger GCED itself is also studied in this work. It is inferred that GCED encompasses the process of teaching and learning how to become global citizens who coexist peacefully on the same planet (Aguilar-Forero et al., 2020) and thus developing strategies to respond coherently to the current systemic crises and ethically to the ongoing colonial conditions at the root of these crises (Stein, 2021). In this regard, no academic research on the confrontation between the education policies of the extreme right and the proposals of the GCED was found. Therefore, the results of this research may be relevant for improving the education policies of governments and international organisations, especially those promoting GCED and combating the rise of the extreme right and its promotion of counter-values internationally.
Both data and research reveal how the far right (Anievas and Saull, 2022; Halperin, 2021) has been steadily growing in Europe (Castro, 2024; Kamenova, 2024; Urbán, 2024). While the far right only represented 8.7 per cent of the European Parliament (EP) 20 years ago, the figures have been gradually increasing, reaching 11.8 per cent in 2009, 15.7 per cent in 2014 and 18 per cent in 2019. By 2024, the far right’s representation in the EP reached 25 per cent, considered to be an exponential growth. Additionally, it has become the second most voted-for force in Europe, ahead of the social democrats (Flores, 2024). This consolidates a progressive ’right-wingisation’ of the European Union (Kamenova, 2024). Furthermore, at the national level in Europe, the far right has managed to become the leading force in Italy, France, Hungary, Belgium, Austria and Poland, and the second force in Germany and the Netherlands (Forti, 2024; Urbán, 2024).
With national nuances, these groups seem to have forged a common agenda with very similar positions on central issues in their programmes: migration (control and tightening of migration policies: zero immigration), climate change (against the green transition or pact), the shrinking of the social state (neoliberal austerity), the recovery of traditional and religious values, meritocracy (‘social justice is aberrant’), the fight against what they call ‘gender ideology’ (gender equality programmes and laws) and the protection of a supposed national ‘identity’ (Sahuquillo and Gómez, 2024). All these proposals clash strongly with those of GCED, such as human rights versus racist policies; sustainability of the planet versus climate denialism; social and redistribution policies versus austerity, the cult of meritocracy and the cutting of social investment; tolerance and respect for other ideologies versus the imposition of a conservative morality and a single national identity; feminism and equality versus the persecution of diversity and the revival of patriarchy; and peaceful conflict resolution and more human rights versus warmongering ultra-nationalism, all of which are advocated by the far right.
For this reason, it is essential to study these political parties’ proposals on education. Analysing the educational policy of the current European extreme right will allow for the investigation of the ideological and political conceptions and principles that guide the different national projects in which they govern (Flew, 2020), as well as their vision of the purpose of education in Europe. This research is also aimed at assessing the impact on education of the alliances between different extreme right forces at the international level, and how this places GCED in the European Union in a crisis of legitimisation (Akkari and Maleq, 2020; Anievas and Saull, 2022).
Research methodology
The research methodology used here lies within the framework of critical discourse analysis (CDA), an approach that has become a promising field for educational research (Marchese, 2022; Martínez-Lirola, 2022). Fairclough and Wodak (2020) consider discourse as a form of social practice, which implies a dialectical relationship between a particular discursive event and the situations, institutions and social structures that frame it. That is to say, social aspects shape discourse, but discourse in turn constitutes the social realm. Discourse has an element of power, which in Fairclough’s (2003) model is related to speech rights and positions and/or the lack of them. Meanings articulated in language can be investigated and ideologies and power relations made visible through CDA, thus making opaque aspects of discourse more transparent.
Therefore, CDA explains the ideologies underlying discourses and narratives and seeks to make visible how the use of language in context functions within relations of social control and the use of power (Fairclough, 1995; Van Dijk, 1977). It focuses ‘on social problems, and especially on the role of discourse in the production and reproduction of the abuse of power or domination’ (Van Dijk, 2003, p. 144). This analysis involves identifying assumptions, contradictions, hidden meanings and how discourses are legitimised, and in this case it applies to policy proposals in the field of education (Moreno, 2017). Additionally, it aims to understand how educational practices and discourses are constructed, reconstructed and transformed through linguistic practices (Moreno, 2017).
The documents that constituted the corpus of analysis, that is, the sample of this research (electoral programmes, campaign documents and public statements of the leaders of the selected European far-right parties), were subjected to the following phases of the CDA process:
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Repeated readings to gain an overview and establish common themes and categories.
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Contextualisation: (a) analysing who, how and for what purpose they were produced, (b) how they were negotiated and agreed, and (c) for whom they are intended. In short, it implies contextualising their meaning and intention.
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Categorisation: (a) extracting key concepts and keywords, (b) determining the contextual thematic axes and networks in which they are embedded and (c) establishing the key categories that appear in accordance with these concepts and thematic networks. The coding of themes and categories was done manually.
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Deepening: (a) formulating inferences about the ideology and approach of the corpus analysed, (b) uncovering silences from the internal logic of the corpus and (c) highlighting contradictions that emerge that may not be clearly evident.
The initial questions that guided the analysis of the readings followed those posed in Carlsson’s (2021) research and applied to the analysis of the development of digital infrastructure in education:
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What problems and challenges to education as well as educational proposals can be identified in the corpus analysed?
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What presuppositions or assumptions underlie the representations of these problems and policy proposals in the corpus reviewed?
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What is hidden, invisible or unproblematised in these representations of problems and ‘solutions’?
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How and in what way do the proposals put forward construct the solution to these problems and challenges?
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Around these questions, the three-dimensional model of discourse analysis of Fairclough and Wodak (2020) was applied, a model developed in numerous CDA studies and research (Cares, 2022; Martínez-Lirola, 2022).
Figure 1 summarises the proposal.
Three-dimensional model (Source: Fairclough and Wodak, 2020)
In specific terms, this three-dimensional CDA model was applied to analyse the corpus texts by considering three interrelated levels (Fairclough, 2001):
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Discourse as text (or textual practice) corresponds to the linguistic analysis of discourse as a unit or written ‘piece of language’ (Martínez-Lirola, 2022), accounting for how the linguistic construction, vocabulary and global structure – among other elements – of texts produce impacts on the meaning, action and social representation of educational proposals; and analysing the text in terms of its texture, that is, the form and organisation of the textual content (Fairclough, 1995). In this sense, the texts and discourses produced have a linguistic form that responds to the social purposes they fulfil. From this dimension, the text is part of the discursive practice, which in turn is a constitutive part of the social practice.
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Discursive practice focuses attention on how educational proposals have been produced and interpreted from an intertextual approach (unravelling the multiple discourses that are present within produced documents) in the social fabric, ideology and semiotic use (Martínez-Lirola, 2022). Any discursive event involves processes of ‘textual production, distribution and consumption and the nature of these varies between different types of discourse according to social factors’ (Fairclough, 1992, p. 78). This dimension also includes discursive genres, which refer to linguistic uses – ‘socially ratified ways of using language in connection with a particular type of social activity’ (Fairclough, 1995, p. 14).
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Social practice alludes to the situational character of the documents and discourses analysed, that is, hegemony (Martínez-Lirola, 2022), given that they are embedded in a set of ideological and political macro-contexts which condition their orientation and interpretation. This, in turn, contributes to the production of an educational imaginary in a certain context of social projection (Chouliaraki and Fairclough, 1999). In this dimension, discursive events are analysed as part of social practices – in the immediate situation – involving participants in a specific context, but at the same time in the institutional and the social context, and following the categories of ideology and hegemony as well (Fairclough, 1992, p. 86), given that any discursive event has political and ideological effects (Moreno, 2017).
Sample
As of 2025 the EP has eight parliamentary groups. Three of them are far right: the European Sovereign Nations (ESN), led by Alternative for Germany (AfD); the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR); and Patriots for Europe (PfE). These three groups have a combined total of 187 MEPs. United as one group, these three far-right parties would have been the second group, only one seat behind the first one, the European People’s Party (EPP). In any case, there are also far-right MEPs outside these three ultra-right groups. There are 11 who, at least for now, are not affiliated with any of them, and another seven who swell the ranks of the EPP. Adding them all up, the far right accounts for 205 seats, which constitutes 28.47 per cent of the seats in the EP.
Their ideological divisions on issues such as support for Ukraine or Russia in the war have left the largest group in the EP in third place. That group is PfE, or Patriots. It is led by the parties of Marine Le Pen and Viktor Orbán. It is made up of 13 parties and has 84 seats. The fourth largest group is ECR, the only far-right group remaining from the previous parliamentary term. Patriots could be seen as a continuation of Identity and Democracy (ID), the other far-right family in the previous EP, now presented as a new force with a different name and the addition of several new parties, such as Orbán’s Fidesz and Vox. The latter has left ECR to join Le Pen’s group. ECR is led by the Italian president, Giorgia Meloni. This legislature has 20 different parties with a total of 78 seats in Brussels.
From this constellation of the European far-right grouping ESN, ECR and PfE, those meeting the following criteria were selected:
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European representativeness: those selected in terms of the highest percentage of votes obtained in the 2024 European elections.
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National influence: they are parties with high influence in the national politics of their own countries according to their electoral results in the last elections in their respective countries.
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Political relevance: far-right political groups with a recognised political relevance and influence at a European and national level, such as Fidesz, of the Hungarian far-right Viktor Orbán, or AfD, were included.
Those who do not have or do not present any explicit political programme on education, or who do not even make statements on this issue, such as Alvise Pérez’s ‘Se acabó la fiesta’ party in Spain, were discarded.
The extreme right-wing political groups whose programmes and educational proposals were analysed in this study can be seen in Table 1.
Political parties whose educational programmes have been analysed
| Country | Political group | Leader | 2024 vote (percentage) |
EU seats |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| France | Rassemblement national (RN) * | Marine Le Pen | 35 | 30 |
| Spain | Vox | Santiago Abascal | 10 | 6 |
| Germany | Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) | Maximilian Krah | 15.60 | 15 |
| Italy | Fratelli d’Italia (FdI) | Giorgia Meloni | 28.80 | 24 |
| Hungary | Fidesz | Víktor Orbán | 44 | 11 |
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Note: * Rassemblement National was called Front National until 2018.
The discourses produced by these political groups were analysed in three areas, which form the research corpus, that is, the sample of documents used in this research:
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the discourses produced in the texts of the electoral programmes and proposals of the political formations
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the discourses produced in the campaign documents promoted by these political formations
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the discourses produced in the speeches and public addresses of the leaders of these selected European far-right parties.
Results
The main results obtained from the CDA of the texts analysed are presented later, grouped according to the categories and subcategories detected in the analysis, as organised in Figure 2.
Categories and subcategories detected in the CDA
Following the organisation of categories and subcategories identified, some of the most significant examples of the different far-right formations analysed are presented in the following sections.
Organisation of the education system
Centralisation and state control
In Spain, Vox (2019) argues that it is necessary to limit ‘as much as possible the legislative capacity of the autonomous regions’ (p. 3) by recentralising transferred competences such as education. In this way the central state would establish a ‘single’ system of education throughout the national territory, marginalising the territories and local communities that it mistrusts. At the same time, it imposes a centralised curriculum that prevents attending to diversity.
In Hungary, Fidesz’s education policies have also recentralised the school system. When Orbán came to power in 1998 with his first election victory, one of his main educational measures was to introduce a so-called framework curriculum (kerettanterv) that sets out what schools should teach (Nahalka, 2022). It conveys suspicion about the capacity of local communities to situate and frame education in their own context, and it lowers expectations about educating for social inclusion, diversity and equity linked to the close contexts of educational communities.
In France, Le Pen announces in her programme that the parliament will determine what is expected of students at the end of each cycle. This measure would be accompanied by the authorisation and control of textbooks by the ministry, thus returning to a ‘teacher-proof curriculum’ model as a form of control over their professional practice, denying them autonomy and professionalism. In addition, teachers will be subject to ‘absolute neutrality … in political, ideological and religious matters’ with an ‘increase in the power of control of inspectors in this area’ (SGEN-CFDT Normandía, 2022). This implies the imposition of the ‘political ideology’ established by the government of the day and by the social, economic and ideological model on education professionals, invalidating their critical capacity.
However, both AfD and Vox are in favour of nationwide standardised assessments as a form of central control, as the contents evaluated will in turn reinforce the main curricular contents to be studied. In the case of AfD, this could be in contradiction with the autonomy they demand for the Länder.
Entrepreneurial management of schools
Meloni’s Italy stands out in this approach, pushing for the creation of ‘Made in Italy’ secondary schools to restore the technical and vocational sector and adapt it to the needs of the economy, and to boost the Italian brand. According to education unions, this creates a model that is dependent on business and subordinated to the market, decreasing the hours of humanistic and general education for students (UNSA, 2024). In other words, a progressive commodification and privatisation of education is being promoted in line with the neoliberal ideology of today’s extreme right.
The Italian Minister of Education and Merit (the name of the ministry implies a declaration of intent) argues that this model of business management of schools should give power back to men in a profession that is ‘too feminised’; thus, this implies reclaiming patriarchal ideology and the discourse of ‘men victimised’ by progressive and diversity politics. According to the Minister, this is a solution to ‘reinforce authority’ and thus ‘repair’ the performance of educational establishments. This is a sign of the cultural battle of the extreme right to recover the model of traditional masculinity in the face of the advances of feminism. Thus, in Italy quotas will be established to recruit more men to head schools, imitating the ‘quota’ policies of equality policies in reverse (UNSA, 2024).
Teachers’ working conditions
In France Rassemblement National (RN) promises salary increases linked to the management-by-objectives business model, rewarding ‘the best teachers’. This has led to a culture of competitiveness among professionals – instead of encouraging cooperation – emulating business-style management in the educational world.
RN aims to abolish all teacher training colleges, where it claims ‘left-wing ideology reigns’ (SGEN-CFDT Normandía, 2022). Total ‘political neutrality’ is demanded of teachers and a professional career that will evolve only according to the ‘merit’ recognised by their hierarchy (Jarraud, 2024).
The party Fidesz in Hungary also introduced a teaching career model based on the életpályamodell, a target-based salary-setting system that not only imposed significant administrative burdens on teachers but also failed to improve their salaries in the long run (Nahalka, 2022). However, these measures are generating a collective culture that equates the management of schools to that of companies.
Privatisation and ‘freedom of choice’ in schools
In France RN (2024) advocates in its programme the opening of economic sectors with a public monopoly, such as education, to private initiative. Underlying this plan is the neoliberal mantra that private is better than public.
RN’s education programme also assumes another of the basic mantras of the neoliberal model: freedom of choice. In Spain Vox (2019) wants to ‘restore [to parents] genuine freedom to choose the education of their children, starting with the choice of school’ (p. 15), in favour of private and charter schools. In Italy, Fratelli d’Italia (2022) promotes freedom of choice for families through the school voucher. RN’s programme also defends its intention to ensure freedom of choice.
Another mechanism in their educational programmes that promotes the privatisation of education is the system of school cheques or vouchers for families to invest in the school of their choice and thus freely choose the educational model they want (Abascal, 2020; Vox, 2019). The language used by far-right nationalism when defending ‘freedom of school choice’ singles out ‘immigrant families’ and excludes and marginalises them. This reflects divisive and racist agendas amplified in established and emerging far-right groups.
Funding
Despite their commitment to privatisation, the far-right parties agree that it is the state that should invest more and better in education (AfD, 2024). For instance, Le Pen criticises Macron’s failure to increase funding for education (L’École, 2024, p. 8). Even Vox (2019) and AfD stress the need to offer a generous and demanding system of scholarships for families with fewer resources (p. 16). However, this would be achieved by introducing an element typical of the traditional and xenophobic ideological model they defend, that is, by establishing that only large, ‘national’ families will be able to benefit from free schoolbooks and bonuses for access to cultural goods (p. 17).
Curriculum and educational content
For her part, Le Pen seeks to strengthen attachment to French national identity through education, claiming that there is no culture of assimilation through school in France (L’École, 2024, p. 8). RN’s programme extols the need to defend the national identity, values and traditions of French civilisation (RN, 2024, p. 91).
In the same vein is Fidesz in Hungary, with materials reflecting a highly nationalist rhetoric, and the AfD (2024), which advocates confronting interculturalism to defend the dominant German culture in a confident and proud manner (p. 48).
Vox, for its part, seeks to introduce school content in line with its ideology of national identity based on the recovery of a supposedly epic, identitarian and mythical past linked to traditional religious and sociocultural values (Stanley, 2019).
Hegemonic culture and assimilationism
In the same vein, it is clear that RN’s project for schools is presented as restoration, a return to a supposed glorious past (Lelévre, 2022). The word glorious is used six times in its programme. RN also considers it essential to defend the French language (RN, 2024, p. 96) and to suppress the language and culture of origin (p. 101). For RN, the education of the foreign and minority population is based on assimilation into the Republic and the French nation (L’École, 2024, p. 5). This is proposed in addition to monitoring everything related to diversity and the rights of racialised and LGBTQI people in schools.
Both RN and the German AfD claim that ‘radical Islam is taking over’, especially in schools, and they continue to attribute the lowering of standards to students of foreign origin (Jarraud, 2024). AfD (2024) denounces the alleged privileged status these minors enjoy in their respective education systems (p. 56) and opposes ‘special rights for Muslim pupils’.
Although AfD (2024) makes explicit its commitment to the dominant German culture and demands an action plan for the preservation and strengthening of the educated German language (p. 48), it sees the co-official languages as a sign of German identity, in line with the German concept of the Länder. Therefore, it also demands strengthening its regional dialects, which developed historically as an intangible heritage of humanity (p. 48).
For its part, Vox (2019) proposes guaranteeing the right to be educated in Spanish throughout the national territory (p. 15), in opposition to the education policies of the Autonomous Communities. According to this party, the co-official languages deny people the right to learn in Spanish. Orbán in Hungary also adopted a framework curriculum that limited what schools could teach their pupils, focusing on ‘national identity’.
Parental control
One of Vox’s flagship measures in Spain is that families should have the right to veto complementary activities taught during school hours (Abascal, 2020; RTVE, 2020). In this way, families can veto content such as affective-sexual education, human rights education or peace education. Vox states that the aim is to defend minors from the ‘indoctrination’ taking place in the education system in Spain (El País, 2020). It views current education policies as a form of totalitarian social engineering, a continuous brainwashing of children and adolescents to transform them into fanatic nationalists hostile to everything Spanish (Fidalgo, 2019).
Targeting indoctrination
These political groups view anything ideologically opposed to their political agenda as indoctrination (Bori, 2022). Isabel Díaz Ayuso, president of the Community of Madrid and an exponent of the extreme right in Spain – albeit affiliated to the conservative Partido Popular – announced that education inspectors would be ordered to withdraw textbooks containing ‘sectarian’ material. Her education minister warned that the regional government would not buy books containing ‘ideologically charged’ expressions such as climate emergency, resilience or gender discrimination. The Murcia Ministry of Education, in the hands of Vox, also communicated that it would review textbooks to identify those that do not respect political neutrality. This is reminiscent of laws passed in Hungary and Poland that restrict or ban LGBTQI content in children’s books in order not to promote homosexuality or deviation from the gender identity conceived at birth (Bori, 2022).
Le Pen also proposes that she will require absolute neutrality from teachers on political, ideological and religious issues (L’École, 2024, p. 14). In addition, she advocates for the Ministry of Education to control curricula and the authorisation of textbooks. To this end, a substantial increase in the control power of inspectors and more frequent inspections will be provided to control these orientations (SGEN-CFDT Normandía, 2022).
Conservative ideology
Most extreme right-wing political parties insist that the classroom should not be a place of political indoctrination (AfD, 2024, p. 55). Simultaneously, they affirm that in schools the classical image of the family should not be destroyed (p. 55) or that there should be a return to core values and national tradition and identity. In reality, it can be seen that the AfD considers it necessary for schools and public authorities to adopt effective measures in defence of traditional family models. In the same vein, Vox (2019) proposes the enactment of an organic law for the protection of the natural family considered as an institution that predates the state (p. 17).
Italy’s Minister of Education and Merit Guiseppe Valditara recently published a book explaining his policy entitled The school of talents (2024). In the book he defends selection, values and authority; points to May 1968 as the source of all evils; and prescribes ‘cultural respect’ as opposed to a culture of ‘educational welfare’ (UNSA, 2024).
Promoting religion … and fighting Islam
Catholicism and Islam seem to be the only religions referred to in electoral programmes to promote the former and reject the latter. However, the parties differ on how to address this issue within the education system.
Vox (2019) calls for the ‘exclusion of Islam in public schools’ (p. 7), while AfD (2024) advocates a German-language Islamic religion subject for all Muslim pupils’ (p. 56). However, AfD (2024) advocates the closure of Koranic schools because of the uncontrollable risk of radical and anti-constitutional indoctrination (p. 56).
For their part, RN and AfD (2024) legitimise their discourse against Islam on the basis of the unequal situation to which the religion subjects women, as it is a religious-political symbol of Muslim women’s obedience to men; this would be contradictory to the integration and equality of women and girls, and the free development of their personality (p. 51). For this reason, RN (2024) wants to ban the wearing of the veil at school and in the public sphere. To combat this, in a clear return to disciplinary models, they propose to introduce the wearing of a uniform at school (p. 103). In contrast, in Italy the extreme right promotes Christian tradition and identity in schools (UNSA, 2024).
The Fidesz government in Hungary pushed for financial measures that have allowed religious schools to flourish and gain a lot of ground, becoming the only option in many rural towns and cities (Bori, 2022). It has also promoted a pro-Jewish campaign in schools, on the principle that anti-Israel is a new form of anti-Semitism. The Tett és Védelem Foundation, dedicated to preventing anti-Semitic manifestations by authentically transmitting knowledge about Judaism, has developed teaching materials that have been included in the Hungarian national core curriculum (Magyar Hirlap, 2023).
Le Pen’s party distances itself from this and proposes a return to secularism in schools currently subjected to Islamist activities (L’École, 2024, p. 14).
Education in values
Patriotic education
The most obvious exponent of patriotic education is Vox (2019) in Spain. It requests that schools learn about and extol the deeds and exploits of our national heroes (p. 3). For this it will be necessary to develop a comprehensive plan for the knowledge, dissemination and protection of national identity and Spain’s contribution to civilisation and universal history.
Against ‘gender ideology’
Vox considers the educational curriculum in Spain to be ‘impregnated’ with ideology and promoting ‘gender ideology, radical feminism’ (Europapress, 2022). For this reason, it argues that education for equality must be eradicated, asserting that it is a mechanism for the persecution of those who think differently (Europapress, 2022). The same approach is applied to comprehensive sex education, which it views as a mechanism meant to deform people’s heads. For Vox, sex education responds to the interests of left-wing ideology and gender ideology. In this sense, it constitutes a practice of indoctrination (Lourido, 2023).
The French RN violently opposes affective-sexual education, which is so important to fight systemic sexism and discrimination against LGBTQI people. Moreover, Meloni’s government rejects compulsory sex education and punishes what it calls ‘gender propaganda’ (UNSA, 2024).
AfD (2024) accuses schools of subjectively emphasising homosexuality and transsexuality (p. 55), which it calls a form of indoctrination of children that must be eradicated. Thus, the discourse against sexual diversity and, therefore, diversity in families appears as the articulating axis of the ‘new extreme right’ (Neubauer and Méndez-Núñez, 2022, p. 13). As mentioned previously, an example of this are the laws passed in Hungary and Poland restricting or banning LGBTQI content (Bori, 2022).
Meritocracy: to end ‘positive discrimination’
RN and AfD insist on the need to restore meritocracy in their education systems. For this reason, RN (2024) intends to eliminate the reform of school rhythms (p. 104). Both parties, RN and AfD, agree that everyone should have a chance, but also that positive discrimination especially benefitting the immigrant population must be ended.
In fact, Le Pen’s RN (2024) education project is based on an analysis of the educational situation portrayed as catastrophic in order to justify the educational model she proposes. Overall, the French education system is described as ‘ineffective’ because ‘little remains’ of academic merit (L’École, 2024, p. 7). An example of this failure would be the plummeting level of French among French pupils (L’École, 2024, p. 6).
Educational methodology
Ideology of hard work
AfD (2024) advocates the values of hard work and discipline as fundamental pillars for improving the quality of education, since willingness to work and discipline are prerequisites for the successful transfer of knowledge (p. 55). It also argues that a reduction of school and professional requirements for reasons of a supposedly better integration should not exist (p. 64). The analysis reveals the connection between the discourse of the ‘new extreme right’ and the neoliberal discourse of growth and competition, showing the neoliberal features of the discourse of these formations (Neubauer and Méndez-Núñez, 2022, p. 14).
Vox (2019) also invokes the ideology of effort, which externalises the causes of failure by holding the victim responsible and making the student the only one to blame for his or her lack of success, thus revictimising him or her. There is also a strong emphasis on the recovery of the culture of teacher authority.
Laws of authority
Vox (2019) seeks to classify assaults on teaching professionals as a crime against authority (p.8), likening the role of teachers to the logic of the police. It proposes a teaching model associated with a figure of authority and discipline. In this process of strengthening the teaching profession from an authoritarian and legalistic point of view, AfD and RN stress the need to restore the authority and respect of the teacher (RN, 2024, p. 103) by both students and families. AfD insists that this type of disrespect occurs mainly among Muslim pupils and their families.
Le Pen’s programme for the restoration of L’École de France is based on three principles: reinstating the effectiveness of teaching; re-establishing the authority of teachers by improving salaries and protecting them against pressure; and restoring tranquillity in schools by putting an end to an open school doctrine and the structural impunity enjoyed by troublemakers (L’École, 2024, p. 9). These proposals imply a move towards a ‘school of authority’ model, a ‘big bang of authority’ in schools. This implies a ban on mobile phones, the reintroduction of minimum penalties in disciplinary councils and the creation of specialised centres for pupils who bully or cause disruption in class. Le Pen has also advocated the reinstatement of the so-called Ciotti law of 2010, which proposed the suspension of family allowances and school grants for pupils who caused repeated incidents at school, as well as the obligation to wear uniforms in both primary and secondary schools. The Ciotti law also applies to the responsibility of families in case of truancy (Jarraud, 2024), resembling Orbán’s policy, which insists on an authoritarian model in education (Bori, 2022).
Punitive pedagogy of sanction and punishment
The French RN plans to control, monitor and punish young people. The compulsory dress code based on uniforms also has an Islamophobic purpose: by encouraging the wearing of uniforms, the aim is also to fight against Islamist communitarianism (statements by RN deputy Roger Chudeau at the session of the National Assembly on 12 January 2023).
Additionally, there is a punitive agenda embedded in its programme for the 2022 presidential elections: it advocates for the suspension of family allowances and grants for families of students who qualify as ‘troublemakers’, in the case of proven absenteeism and serious and repeated disturbances (SGEN-CFDT Normandía, 2022).
In Italy, instead of fighting the causes of school dropout, parents of children who drop out are threatened with imprisonment for up to two years (UNSA, 2024). In The school of talents, Valditara (2024) refers to humiliation as an educational tool. In this sense, students’ failures should be triggers for awareness, and inadequacies should not be encouraged but treated ‘objectively’. This principle applies mainly to foreigners, whose integration the Minister considers a ‘failure’. He also adds that separate arrangements will be set up for them (UNSA, 2024).
Social selection vs educational inclusion
RN advocates a selection process in which compulsory examinations determine access not only to secondary school but also to university. It recommends the orientation of pupils from Grade 5 onwards by means of an exam that filters access to secondary school and guides a large proportion of children towards professional training. The aim is to reduce the number of secondary and high school students. In addition, it commits to creating specialised centres for disruptive or aggressive students. This measure was the subject of a bill presented by Le Pen’s party in April 2024. In line with the dress code uniform policy, the title of the bill mentioned Islamophobic objectives: proposed law aimed at definitively excluding students convicted of Islamist activities from ordinary establishments (RN programme for the 2022 presidential elections). AfD, for its part, extols the great pedagogical value of special schools.
Discussion and conclusions
Among the far-right parties analysed, there is a belief that there are groups who intend to mentally subjugate the ‘people’ in order to dominate Europe. That is why the far right needs to make schools the bastion of their ideological and cultural battle. As a leader of the Hungarian Fidesz (2023) stated, such groups have sought to turn the European educational system and universities into instruments of political power determined by so-called progressive ideology.
This threat is to be countered by a return to ‘traditional values’ but from a market perspective; it is a proposal tinged with a bizarre mixture of patriotism, neoliberalism, xenophobia and assimilation. Despite their discrepancies, they have managed to shape a rather similar minimal discourse regarding the educational model which could be denominated as educational neo-fascism (Díez-Gutiérrez, 2022).
Notwithstanding certain nuances, it is possible to identify several essential common approaches:
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In the organisation of the education system, as well as state centralisation, the far-right proposals studied promote the business management of schools and their privatisation through the ‘freedom’ of choice of school linked to a market perspective.
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In the school curriculum, the far-right proposals studied combat the threat of ‘leftist indoctrination’, promoting national identity and hegemonic culture and giving families the tools to control educational content.
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In pedagogical methodology, their proposals promote the ideology of effort and the culture of teaching authority, as well as a punitive and selection-based pedagogy that rejects attention to diversity and cultural differences in schools.
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In educational values, they pursue a revival of ‘patriotic education’; a commitment to meritocracy, excluding students with difficulties and blaming students for their own failure; and the rejection of positive discrimination and what they call ‘gender ideology’.
These common elements allow these extremist forces to advance the following objectives: (a) questioning and discrediting public education as indoctrination, due to its capacity to educate students in democratic values and social equality; (b) focusing the debate on the freedom of choice for parents against the right of the child to receive a plural and comprehensive education; (c) attacking the public school model by sowing suspicion about the work of teachers and undermining the relationship of trust between the family and the school; (d) promoting fear among teachers, who are beginning to feel harassed and threatened by possible legal complaints via ‘parental pin’; and (e) making the media agenda revolve around these aspects instead of the real challenges of twenty-first-century education.
Particularly important is the far right’s rhetoric about a ‘neutral’ education and schools as spaces ‘free of indoctrination’, presenting the educational field as non-ideological. The aim is to impose a ‘mono-ideological’ school serving a hegemonic national identity, which ‘is in itself an ideological project that seeks to serve specific political and economic interests, and not those such as pluralism, democracy, and a critical spirit or the respect of minorities’ (Neubauer and Méndez-Núñez, 2022, p. 17).
The results show how the educational models defended by the extreme right at an international level follow similar patterns – with slight differences – that focus on reviving traditional and xenophobic approaches. Simultaneously, the defence of radical neoliberal educational policies is present, placing the liberal order in greater crisis. For this reason, public education and educational policy can still be configured as a space of dispute to defend a critical GCED. This is crucial in a continent shipwrecked by the rise of the extreme right and its questioning of the basic postulates of education for human rights, sustainability, peace and intercultural education.
We conclude that there is a common political agenda – albeit with nuances – that shapes international liaisons of the far right at a European level regarding educational policies; nonetheless, these alliances currently lack any form of stable functional and organisational structures. They consider education and school as a crucial space through which to shape the mentality of the population, thus fighting against the model of GCED (Biccum, 2018; Khoo and Jørgensen, 2021), as presented in the Dublin Declaration’s 2022 definition:
Global Education is education that enables people to reflect critically on the world and their place in it; to open their eyes, hearts and minds to the reality of the world at local and global level. It empowers people to understand, imagine, hope and act to bring about a world of social and climate justice, peace, solidarity, equity and equality, planetary sustainability, and international understanding. It involves respect for human rights and diversity, inclusion, and a decent life for all, now and into the future. Global Education encompasses a broad range of educational provision: formal, non-formal and informal; life-long and life-wide. We consider it essential to the transformative power of education.
In this context, it is necessary to re-politicise public education and recover the debate that enables the cultural battle in favour of a model of GCED. It is equally important to reclaim an essential agreement regarding education as a space for reflection and global political analysis, enhancing students’ capacity for critical thinking. This should be pursued in a school environment where opinions and analyses of reality are framed within the principles and values enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
As shown in the analysis, the educational project of the extreme right has a profound impact on GCED, questioning and deconstructing at its roots the consensual framework of human and social rights. This also challenges the values of respect, inclusivity, peace and the construction of a more socially and ecologically just world, promoted at least in theory by international organisations. Therefore, the existence of a common far-right political agenda in education is clear.
Finally, it is vital to acknowledge a limitation encountered while carrying out the study. The scope of the sample is restricted to Europe, while the described common agenda of the extreme right operates at a global level. Thus, it is recommended to expand this research internationally in further studies, enhancing the scope of information on the following key topics: the position of political parties on the issue in question, the measures adopted in the European Parliament to counter the extremist bills and the development of education policies in the European Union. With a more comprehensive approach, the contribution of future studies will prove beneficial for resisting far-right, non-inclusive education bills.
Funding
This research received funding from the European Union through the European Erasmus + Project, Jean Monnet Module, entitled ‘Building up an Inclusive and Democratic Europe through a Dialogical Co-Creation of Intercultural Solutions to the Rise of Neo-Fascism and Xenophobia’.
Declarations and conflicts of interest
Research ethics statement
Not applicable to this article.
Consent for publication statement
Not applicable to this article.
Conflicts of interest statement
The authors declare no conflict of interest with this work. All efforts to sufficiently anonymise the authors during peer review of this article have been made. The authors declare no further conflicts with this article.
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