Venezuelan Education Law: Socialist Indoctrination or Liberatory Education?

Venezuelan Education Law: Socialist Indoctrination or Liberatory Education?

August 21st 2009, by James Suggett - Venezuelanalysis.com

Venezuelan opposition activists allege that the new Education Law, which the National Assembly passed unanimously shortly after midnight on August 14th following an extended legislative session, is unconstitutional, anti-democratic, politicizes the classroom, threatens the family and religion, and will allow the state to take children away from their parents for indoctrination. Are they correct?

In defense of the law, Education Minister Hector Navarro told several national media outlets that the opposition's claims are not only incorrect, they "form part of a campaign that seeks to generate fear in the population so they will be against the Law."

Before and after the law's passage, demonstrations both for and against the law turned into violent confrontations in which tear gas and other objects were thrown, journalists were attacked, and the police were deployed to maintain the public order. Opponents of the law, mainly adversaries of the government of President Hugo Chavez, vowed to sabotage the law's implementation with acts of disobedience in schools, and others announced they would challenge the law in the courts. Proponents of the law, mainly Chavez supporters, formed organizations to assure the law is applied.

To understand the ongoing controversy, it is helpful to carefully examine the following three questions: What are the fundamental tenets of the new Education Law? What are the main critiques of the law, and are they correct? And, what are the major challenges facing the Venezuelan educational system now that the law has been passed?

The Law

The official title of the law is, "Organic Education Law," meaning it has the highest legal stature under the constitution and is required by the constitution to uphold constitutional principles.

At the law's foundation is the concept that the state has the responsibility to ensure that all citizens have a high quality education, free of charge, from childhood through the undergraduate university level. This concept of the "Educator State" (Estado Docente) is introduced in Article 5, which says the state must guarantee education "as a universal human right and a fundamental, inalienable, non-renounceable social duty, and a public service... governed by the principles of integrality, cooperation, solidarity, attentiveness, and co-responsibility." The law also requires "progressive annual growth" in education spending as a percentage of GDP.

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4734

a free education through university to every citizen of Venezuela who wants it (with some basic requirements for college), AND--and here is the most interesting, visionary and controversial part of it--states that the education system will promote participatory democracy (a step further along the democratic road than representative democracy). The law promotes equal rights, labor rights, more democracy in the administration of schools, parental involvement, and many other progressive or simply common sense principles in education. The "participatory democracy" provision has to do with educating youngsters to become full citizens--not passive, not yielding of their personal sovereignty to elected leaders, being active, creative, involved citizens, contributing members of a grass roots democracy in which people think for themselves, do for themselves, challenge authority and take responsibility for solving problems.

I can see how fascists don't like this at all. I can also see how--as the writer points out--it will be difficult to implement, as well as difficult to legislate for (write specific laws that fulfill these "organic" or constitutional principles). The fascists are out in force against it. When they ruled Venezuela, they couldn't have cared less about the education of the poor majority and utterly neglected it. And the rightwing Catholic clergy in Venezuela is, of course, against it, and are accusing the Chavez government of politicizing education and wanting to propagandize children, because they want to reserve the right to propagandize children unto themselves. (The Catholic Church objecting to propagandized education is absurd.)

The real objections, that can't be named, are to democracy itself, to equal education for the poor and to secular government. Fascists don't want to live in an equal world. They want a world in which only they have free speech, only they have educational opportunities, and in which they can impose their political and religious views on everyone else. It's ironical that the fascists here hate Darwin, and want to interject their notions of God into the science classroom, since they no doubt consider themselves to be at the top of the Darwinian food chain. The big fish eat the little fish, in their view of the world, and dog eats dog. Odd that they would consider Darwin to be the devil. (Or maybe not so odd, since fascists do tend to project.) But back to Venezuela (I don't know if Darwin is an issue there.) The notion that some things need to be preserved against religious enthusiasm (and religious wars)--the government, the law, justice, civics education and, in general, the education (that is, the freeing) of young minds, is abhorrent to fascists. And the notion of "participatory democracy" must scare the beejeebers out of them. MORE democracy than people electing Chavez and a big pro-Chavez majority in the National Assembly? Horrors!

They are already organizing civil disobedience against free education for all Venezuelans and "participatory democracy" in the schools. Their non-violent resistance will consist of continual screaming so that no one else can be heard.