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

And the rightwing in Venezuela is as nuts, as fanatical and as anti-secular and anti-democratic as the rightwing here. So we can extrapolate what the rightwing there must think of the government requiring civics education, instructing children in their civil rights, or apprizing children of the human right to health care, or teaching them about equal rights, or providing a true account of grass roots struggles or labor history. The rightwing there, like the rightwing here, want education to be propagandistic in their interest; they want the same of the media. They are hostile to education that frees the individual to think for herself, just as they are hostile to "free speech" for the poor majority--and they are utterly hypocritical on both. They not only don't want a good education for the poor; they want NO education for the poor, as they plainly showed when they ruled Venezuela, and utterly neglected education for the poor majority. When they did their coup attempt in 2002, the first thing they did was to shut down the one government TV channel, so that members of the elected government could not reach the people, for instance to tell them that Chavez had not resigned as president (a lie that the corporate channels were promulgating on behalf of the coup). The members of Chavez's government were not permitted air time, on the public airwaves controlled by corporate monopolies. So much for their bullshit about "free speech," and their cries of anguish--echoed round the world by our corpo/fascist press--when the Chavez government tries to introduce a little bit of balance and regulation in the public interest, to the public airwaves!

Hypocrisy, thy name is "rightwing." They don't give a damn for democracy, free speech, civics education or good government.

They hate good government, there and here, and try everything they can to destroy it. The Chavez government has many "good government" policies and programs. For instance, they enforce the tax laws. Venezuela used to have a real problem with tax scofflaws, and the Chavez government has done a lot to clean it up. The rich still try to offshore their money to hide it from taxes. (A bunch of them were caught in the Stanford banking scandal.) They are lawless greedbags. Civics education would include your obligation to pay your fare share of taxes, along with your right to have a say in the use of tax money. The rich elite doesn't want any of this. They want to be free of government--free to loot and plunder and hoard at will. And they for sure don't want poor to learn that they have a right to participate in public affairs and have a say in the use of government money. The rich and the rightwing want that for themselves, and no one else. So of course they oppose civics education, and call it "communist" or "anti-Catholic" or whatever nonsense they are blathering about. They are exactly the same as the tiny minority here that gets all hot and bothered about Darwin, with the rich elite tee-heeing behind their hands at their successful "divide and conquer" tactic. The rich don't give a fuck about Darwin either way--in fact they probably think they are at the top of the "Darwinian" food chain. What they want is for all the "little people" to be arguing about something stupid, so they can steal all their money. So, too, these pious Catholic greedbags in Venezuela. They "take children from their mothers" every day, when the mothers have to work as their maids because of poverty! In Catholic schools, the Church dictates the curriculum, not the parents. And it is as propagandistic as it can be. For Catholics to be accusing the government of having propagandistic designs in education is absurd.

was done to death in Cuba in the very early 1960's, when they claimed the revolutionary government would seize control of their children, would send children to Siberia, would make slaves of children and force them to work in the sugar cane fields, etc., etc., etc.

The most gullible among us took up that fantasy, incorporating it into their own shrieking fears of communism coming to get them in the U.S.

No one came to get the children in Cuba. No, they're still there, accept for the children of the wealthy racist right-wingers who took the planes to the U.S., during Operation Peter Pan, conceived and conducted by the CIA working with the Catholic Church, through Monsignor Bryan Walsh, getting parents to put their offspring on airplanes to Miami, and have them raised by either relatives or friends in the States, or sent to foster homes arranged by the Church, with the parents planning to join them later. Some kids got stranded here in foster homes, some were traumatized deeply, some were molested by foster family members, and some, by god, went into politics! Right-wing politics, of course, like Honduran ambassador Llorens, and former Florida Senator Mel Martinez, friend of the Cuban Mafia in Florida, and the Bushes.

You'd think the gullible in Venezuela would at least be able to think, "Say, didn't I hear something about the Cuban government taking control of Cuban kids? Did it really happen?" Then, the next step would be to try to find out more about it, then finding out the truth, then, finding out it's a complete sham, shut the #### UP.

What's the explanation? Do people just stay drunk all the time so their brains don't function any more? How can they be so profoundly stupid?

Peace Patriot has mentioned Venezuelan schemers already dragged out this whopper a couple of years ago prior to the first referendum. They pounded it into the ground over and over and over, telling poorer, less informed, less likely to have research access, poor Venezuelans how that mean government was going to steal their kiddies away from them and they'd never see them again if they voted for the referendum. They'd be voting away their children if they voted the wrong way.
Many abstained from that referendum, if you'll remember.

Looks as if they'll keep using this one again and again until FINALLY everyone knows beyond all doubt that's just NOT going to happen. That fear bypasses the brain altogether, and goes straight to the deepest fears people have. It's underhanded. It's cheating. It's psychological warfare.

As for indoctrination, NOTHING indoctrinates children more than a church private school, Catholic or Protestant. NOTHING.

As for public schools, there's absolutely no small space there which is left unpropagandized, either. We are all told exactly how we are to view this country, this government, public figures of the past, with heavy spinning, and NO acknowledgement of what the #### happened to the Native Americans, the African people kidnapped from their families and homeland forever, and forced into slavery, the American union workers slaughtered by factory and mine owners, and others, the murderous indifference to human life among the workers by American business owners, children forced to work in factories, and absolute treachery, harrassment, persecution, murder of political dissidents reaching back for ages.

And everything done in contempt, and greed to harm American citizens has been done in spades to the citizens of countries elsewhere in the world where the powerful of this country could buy, seduce, bribe, blackmail, or coerce their leaders into betraying their own countrymen, made so easy when the leaders were racists to start with, who had nothing but contempt for the brown or black, or mestizo citizens. Our multinationals operating in Central, South America, the Caribbean used barbaric measures to subjugate and exploit entire countries while setting up their greedy "leaders" in positions of authority, and power.

It would make the angels weep. It only makes the right-wing horny, rapid breathing, and sweaty.

More lies? They're always on the way. More tomorrow, and the next day. They keep recycling them, don't they? It's about time they had to get their lies stuffed back down their ugly throats. Any day, now.