Ensuring Indoctrination
T(H)ugo Chavez plumbed new depths today in his quest for an authoritarian dictatorship in Venezuela. Now he is threatening to take over any private school that does not submit to state control and accept the state-sanctioned indoctrination curriculum.
CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez threatened on Monday to close or take over any private school that refuses to submit to the oversight of his socialist government as it develops a new curriculum and textbooks.
"Society cannot allow the private sector to do whatever it wants," said Chavez, speaking on the first day of classes.
All schools, public and private, must admit state inspectors and submit to the government's new educational system, or be closed and nationalized, with the state taking responsibility for the education of their children, Chavez said.
A new curriculum will be ready by the end of this school year, and new textbooks are being developed to help educate "the new citizen," said Chavez's brother and education minister Adan Chavez, who joined him a televised ceremony at the opening of a public school in the eastern town of El Tigre.
The president's opponents accuse him of aiming to indoctrinate young Venezuelans with socialist ideology. But the education minister said the aim is to develop "critical thinking," not to impose a single way of thought.
Just what the new curriculum will include and how it will be applied to all Venezuelan schools and universities remains unclear.
"We want to create our own ideology collectively — creative, diverse," the president said, adding that it would help develop values of "cooperation and solidarity."
All schools will be bound to "subordinate themselves to the constitution" and comply with the "new Bolivarian educational system," he said, referring to his socialist movement named after South American independence hero Simon Bolivar.
(T)Hugo might want to remember how declaring himself a dictator worked out for Simon Bolivar in the long run.
World news | Gaius Monday, 17 September , 2007
By Lars Walker, Monday, 17 September , 2007 @ 12:31 pm
If Chavez ever gets run out of Venezuela, he’ll have a promising career as an American public school administrator.
By Rich Horton, Monday, 17 September , 2007 @ 1:31 pm
In related news I hear Danny Glover is set to join the Hitler….I mean Chavez Youth.
By Gaius, Monday, 17 September , 2007 @ 1:32 pm
Heh.