Venezuelan National Assembly Passes New Education Law

Venezuelan National Assembly Passes New Education Law

August 14th 2009, by James Suggett - Venezuelanalysis.com

Opponents alleged that the law is anti-democratic because it was not subject to enough public consultation. They also said it threatens religious education and the family, and politicizes the classroom. In June, radio commentators falsely reported that two articles in the law would permit the state to take children between the ages of 3 and 20 away from their parents for socialist indoctrination.

In response to the allegations, Education Minister Hector Navarro fervently denounced the lie that the state will be permitted to sequester children, and repeatedly pointed out that the procedures taken by the National Assembly for the discussion and passage of the law were fully in line with the national constitution.

The Minister said the opposition's claims are not only incorrect, they "form part of a campaign that seeks to generate fear in the population."

Also in response to the allegations, several National Assembly legislators and some less intense opponents of the law cited numerous articles in the law which support the role of the family as part of the educational community, establish that religious education must be carried out privately and not in public schools, and expressly prohibit political propaganda in the classroom.

Several leaders of the National Workers Union (UNETE), Venezuela's largest labor union confederation, praised the law for expanding protections for teachers as well as laborers in educational institutions, and for establishing more democratic university admissions policies.

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/4722

A provision of the new Venezuelan Educational law requires schools to teach students to think critically about what they read and see on TV. That should be made a requirement here before anyone is allowed to listen to Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin or any other Republican.

requires that the kids be well grounded in Bolivarian thinking.

That Bolivarian principles--which, like most philosophies, are in the eye of the preacher--might not stand the withering onslaught of critical thinking. In my limited experience, whenever a teacher is teaching critical thinking, the result is whatever the teacher wants. After all, critical thinking requires background knowledge, and typically the kids lack background knowledge unless the teacher provides it.

It can be indoctrination, perpetuation of dogma, or it can be something more; and it largely depends on the teacher which it is. You cannot get blood out of a turnip. I don't pretend to know how this will turn out, it's hard to be optimistic, but it's not like it's systematically better somewhere else. Education in the USA is permeated with free market crap, and other things, and in China with different dogmas, and so on. You can argue from the methods that the state uses to enforce its dogma, mostly based on the level of surveillance, and soundly, but that does not seem to apply in Venezuela, which is far from a police state. It is not like in some other place there are not all sorts of mandates as to what children are supposed to "learn".

Heretofore, religion -- the Catholic Religion in this largely Catholic country -- was a required subject in the public schools. Jews and students from other religious backgrounds could be excused for the required two hours a week, but they had no where else to go, except the streets. The Chavez government felt it was unfair to deprive non-Catholics of two hours of school time and believed such students were stigmatized if they did not attend the Catholic instruction.


The removal of Catholic religion as a required course of course, infuriates the Catholic Church hierarchy, who accuse Chavez of "Killing God in the Schools". The law states that religious instruction should be handled by the family and the family's church. This revolutionary concept, known in the U.S. as our First Amendment, is anathema to the Catholic oligarchy.

The law also provides that everyone who is qualified by a national examination shall be admitted to the public universities. In the past, prospective students had to pay substantial sums to university officials to be admitted, so this is a major improvement.

The Chavez government is also establishing several hundred more "Bolivarian" universities, for which high school graduation or the equivalent, is the only requirement.

The new law gives students and lower level employees a vote in the running of the universities. Heretofore, it was only the professors and administrators who determined university policies. Local community council (consejo comunals) will also have some input, though I am unclear as to exactly how this will operate. The law (and the Constitution) still provides that the university have autonomy from the government, although the government provides the funding. Government funds will still be given to private schools, but probably in smaller amounts than the past.

The public universities are free to students, who actually receiving a stipend for living expenses. Private schools and universities are expensive despite government subsidies, and affordable only to the middle and upper classes.

The Venezuelan public universities follow the European model of being essentially autonomous territories, where the police are not permitted to go, and the government has heretofore had little say in setting university policies. This has allowed the university administrators, many of whom are active in the opposition, to set up virtual "fiefdoms" in which they use government funds to support oppositionist policies. Some administrators have been accused of supplying student opposition groups with the funds to organize anti-government demonstrations, even to the point of buying guns with it.

Traditionally, only the upper classes in Venezuela had access to the universities, and they still compose much of the university population. This accounts for the number of student oppositionists. With the change in admission policies, however, the universities will be democratized, one of the reasons the oppositionist students are opposing the new educational law.