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Chavez threatens to take over schools

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez shows a globe to a group of pupils on the first day of school on Monday in Anzoategui, Venezuela. PHOTO: AFP

President Hugo Chavez threatened on Monday 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, 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," said Chavez's brother and education minister, Adan, 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 shows some premedical students already have a recommended reading list including Karl Marx's Das Kapital and Fidel Castro's speeches.

The syllabus also includes quotations from Chavez and urges students to learn about slain revolutionary Ernesto ``Che'' Guevara and Colombian rebel chief Manuel Marulanda, whose guerrillas are considered a terrorist group by Colombia, the US and the EU.

Venezuelan officials defend the program at the Latin American Medical School.

"If they attack us because we're indoctrinating, well yes, we're doing it, because those capitalist ideas that our young people have -- and that have done so much damage to our people -- must be eliminated," said Zulay Campos, a member of the Bolivarian State Academic Commission.

Chavez's efforts to spread ideology throughout society is "typical of communist regimes at the beginning" in Russia, China and Cuba -- and is aimed at "imposing a sole, singular vision," sociologist Antonio Cova said.

Anticipating criticism, Chavez noted that a state role in regulating education is accepted in countries from Germany to the US.

Chavez said all schools in Venezuela must comply with the "new Bolivarian educational system," named after South American liberation leader Simon Bolivar and Chavez's socialist movement.

Previous educational systems carried their own ideology, Chavez said. Leafing through texts from the 1970s, he pointed out how they referred to Venezuela's "discovery" by Europeans.

"They taught us to admire Christopher Columbus and Superman," Chavez said.

Education based on capitalist ideology has corrupted children's values, he said.

"We want to create our own ideology collectively -- creative, diverse," he said.

About 20 of the 400 international pre-med students have dropped out of the state medical school near Caracas. Among them was Gabriel Gomez Guerrero of Colombia, who was shocked that the syllabus counts Marulanda among "important Latin American thinkers."

The head of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) is Bogota's public enemy No. 1.

"They may brainwash other people, but not me," Gomez said.
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