Chávez and the Bolivarian Education System

Mariano Herrera

 

Bolivarian schools are perhaps the only expression of education policy within the formal education system of Venezuela.
On September 17, Hugo Chávez announced a newly designed curriculum for Venezuela called the “Bolivarian Education System,” and the official documents reveal a drastic departure from the current curriculum.

The most extreme changes are arguably the emphasis on Marxism - Leninism starting in the third year of secondary school, and the militaristic ideology guiding the programs of the fourth and fifth years of secondary school (equivalent to Grades 10, 11 and 12 in Canada). This program reflects the socialist rhetoric that has characterized Chávez’s administration. If applied, the curriculum will be an attack against freedom of thought and against Venezuela’s own constitution.

Yet Bolivarian schools are not Chávez’s invention. Several school institutions submitted the proposal to previous governments, and the change was born out of a national consensus. But the consensus on education stopped there. First, the Ministry of Education (ME) generated considerable controversy after announcing both the National Education Project (PEN) and “Decree 1011” in 2000. The rejected PEN was written by Carlos Lanz, a radical leftist, and the openly Marxist document did not achieve consensus even among the high officials of the ME.
Decree 1011 was a presidential decree enacted in October 2000 that created an “itinerant supervisor” who was in charge of auditing public and private schools and had the authority to appoint and remove principals. In addition, supervisors were appointed by the Minister without being subjected to the legal regulations. This decree generated a strong opposition movement that mobilized tens of thousands of people who demonstrated all through the year 2000.

Massive demonstrations against the education system continued until 2001, forming a strong foundation for the anti-Chávez movement. There was a nearly constant presence of demonstrators on the streets until April 11, 2002, and protests continued with the oil strike in December of the same year.
In 2003, the opposition collected signatures to call for a referendum that would revoke the Chávez administration. Public opinion indicated that if the referendum was carried out that year, Chávez would be defeated. As a result, Chávez manipulated the electoral system in order to postpone the referendum until August 2004. In November 2003 he started the education “missions” under direct advice from Cuban agents, who also implemented the projects.

These missions are social programs that benefit those sectors victimized by the institutional weakness of the Venezuelan State. They are special programs that address the real situations of marginalized groups, and all beneficiaries of education missions receive a monthly scholarship equivalent to US$100. For these reasons, the missions have received widespread acceptance among Venezuelans and have increased Chávez’s popularity.

Chávez has achieved great political success with non-formal education, thanks to the electoral benefit provided by the missions. But he has faced a solid opposition in the formal education sector. Nevertheless, the formal education system was politically co-opted by the government starting in 2004. In fact, the Minister of Education has single-handedly appointed 115,000 new teachers this year, representing 30 per cent of the total number of professors and teachers, and they have not been subjected to the legal requirements for public school teachers.

The results of Chávez’s education policies are not flattering. The grade repetition and drop-out rates are identical to the last five years of the 1990s. Registration for first grade has been decreasing since 2005. The test results for reading comprehension and mathematics indicate stagnation in the level of learning at public schools.

In reality, the Bolivarian schools were the only real change in education policy that Chávez managed to implement in his first five years of government. The education policies implemented by the Chávez government have actually had a greater impact outside of the formal education system than within it. In fact, according to the official figures for 2007, only 5,000 out of approximately 24,000 public schools are officially Bolivarian.
Arguably, education has been a powerful political instrument for Chávez, especially because of the positive social impact of the “missions.” But, for the time being, the impact of these missions as ideological instruments seems to be much lower. In the end, the quality of public schools, on which the poorest people rely for their education, is still far from being improved.

Mariano Herrera is the Director of the Centre of Cultural and Education Investigation (CICE) in Venezuela.www.cice.org.ve