Artículo crítico aparecido en la revista The Economist sobre la reforma en curso de la educación escolar venezolana inspirada en los ideales del llamado “chavismo”.
Recursos asociados
Teodoro Petkoff “desmenuza” al líder venezolano: “Chávez no es aún dictador”El Nuevo Diario, 15 octubre 2007
Nuevo diseño curricular amerita un debate pedagógico en el país, Diario El Tiempo, 15 octubre 2007
MARGINALIDAD O INTEGRACIÓN EDUCATIVA, Portal Alba, 14 octubre 2007
Desde mi bohío – Totalitarismo de Estado, 13 octubre 2007
Sobre el pulso en América, El Diario de Hoy, 12 octubre 2007
Magisterio y privados siguen sin recibir nuevo diseño curricular , 4 octubre 2007
Versión final del currículo suprime socialismo del siglo XXI, El Universal.com, 3 octubre 2007
Presidente Chávez presentó el Diseño Curricular del Sistema Educativo Bolivariano, Noticias Bolivarianas, 24 septiembre 2007
Postings previos sobre este tópico
Reforma educacional chavista, 20 septiembre 2007
Venezuela: ¿Hacia dónde camina la reforma de la educación superior?, 4 agosto 2007
Gobierno del Presidente Chávez anuncia nuevas institituciones de educación superior, 1 junio 2007
Venezuela: reforma educacional socialista y el reto del “hombre nuevo”, 7 marzo 2007
Venezuela: Hacia una nueva educación bolivariana, 26 enero 2007

Education in Venezuela
Fatherland, socialism or death
Oct 11th 2007 | CARACAS
From The Economist print edition
Venezuela’s schools receive orders to create the “new man”
VENEZUELAN parents can have any schooling they like for their children—so long as it’s red. That is the message from President Hugo Chávez and his elder brother Adán, a Marxist physics teacher who is the education minister. It is spelt out in a 549-page draft education plan recently leaked to the press. It was expressed, too, at the start of the school year last month, when television showed images of high-school pupils chanting “fatherland, socialism or death!” and singing songs in praise of the president.
For many teachers and middle-class parents this smacks of an Orwellian nightmare. Fears of government intervention in private schools brought them on to the streets in the early years of Mr Chávez’s presidency, and helped provoke the coup that briefly ousted him from power in 2002. Back then, the government denied that it was seeking to indoctrinate youngsters. But both Chávez brothers now say that the aim of the new education plan is “the formation of the new man”.
That phrase was coined by Ernesto “Che” Guevara in the early years of the Cuban revolution. His “new man” would be motivated by moral rather than material incentives. Cuba’s communist government has pursued this chimera in vain for decades. Now its Venezuelan ally is embarking on the quest. “The old values of individualism, capitalism and egoism must be demolished,” says the president. “New values must be created, and that can only be done through education.”
The government has neither confirmed nor denied the authenticity of the leaked draft curriculum. But its contents chime with many official statements. It says that children will be taught that capitalism is “a form of world domination” associated with imperialism. They will learn about liberation movements, but only socialist ones. Their study of Latin American economic integration excludes the Andean Community; the president cancelled Venezuela’s membership of this because it was dominated by “neoliberal” thinking.
By their mid-teens pupils will need to show “a critical attitude towards any attempt at internal or external aggression”. They will also have to develop “community-information mechanisms” (ie, say opponents, a network of spies) to defend national sovereignty. Officials admit that this is an ideological project, but so are all education curriculums, they say.
Already, according to the education ministry, 150,000 teachers have taken part in courses to prepare them for the new “Bolivarian Education System”, recently defined by the president as “red, very red”. Even those sympathetic to the idea remain confused, however, because they have yet to receive a copy of the curriculum. Nonetheless, the new approach is being gradually adopted by state schools, and will be applied to private ones next year. About a fifth of Venezuelan children are taught in private schools, and the government says that these will not be abolished. But the president has warned them that if they decline to implement the new curriculum they will be taken over by the state.
Mr Chávez has always seen education as the key to making his “revolution” irreversible. He can claim an electoral mandate for its reform. During the campaign for December’s presidential election (in which he won 62% of the vote) he cited Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist who preached the need to replace capitalist with socialist “hegemony”, by taking over those institutions that transmit the values of society. The principal carriers of the capitalist virus, Mr Chávez said, were the church, the schools and the media.
In May he refused to renew the broadcasting licence of the main opposition television channel. Since the Catholic church has influence over private schooling, the education reform hits the other two targets in one blow. Under the new plan, Catholic doctrine could still be taught in schools, but would no longer be compulsory.
Venezuela’s 1999 constitution, inspired by Mr Chávez, guarantees “respect for all currents of thought” in education. This is not one of the articles he wants to change in a referendum due in December. But it seems as if it will be disregarded. Asked recently about the 40% of voters who have consistently opposed the president, Adán Chávez said those who were “not oligarchs” would soon recognise their error. That theory could soon be tested again on Venezuela’s streets.