Chavez To Close Schools Resistant To Socialist Ideas
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CARACAS, Venezuela — President Chavez threatened yesterday to take over any private schools refusing to submit to the oversight of his socialist government, a move some Venezuelans fear will impose leftist ideology in the classroom.
All Venezuelan schools, both public and private, must submit to state inspectors enforcing the new educational system. Those that refuse will be closed and nationalized, Mr. Chavez said.
A new curriculum will be phased in during this school year, and new textbooks are being developed to help educate “the new citizen,” Mr. Chavez’s brother and education minister, Adan Chavez, added in their televised ceremony on the first day of classes.
Just what the curriculum will include and how it will be applied to all Venezuelan schools and universities remains unclear.
But one college-level syllabus obtained by the Associated Press shows some premedical students already have a recommended reading list including Karl Marx’s “Das Kapital” and Fidel Castro’s speeches, alongside traditional subjects like biology and chemistry. The syllabus also includes quotations from Mr. Chavez and urges students to learn about slain revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara and Colombian rebel chief Manuel Marulanda, whose leftist guerrillas are considered a terrorist group by Colombia, America, and the European Union.
Venezuelan officials defend the program at the Latin American Medical School — one in a handful of state-run colleges and universities that emphasize socialist ideology — as the new direction of Venezuelan higher education.
“We must train socially minded people to help the community, and that’s why the revolution’s socialist program is being implemented,” Zulay Campos, a member of a Bolivarian State Academic Commission that evaluates compliance with academic guidelines, said.
“Those capitalist ideas that our young people have — and that have done so much damage to our people — must be eliminated,” Ms. Campos said.