Will learn to drive bulldozers.
Venezuelan 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.
“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.”
This is right in line with the policies of some Canadian political parties. Does Venezuela become more like Canada every day, or vice versa?
Well, first the private producers were driven out now the tenured educators.
Who will be left in this “natuionalized” utopia?…the state reliant and uneducated?
Chavez is the epitome of greaseball socialism, and no doubt a hero to many of the loony left. What else can we expect from him??? Stay tuned, I’m sure there’s more to come.
But this is the system in most countries. Surely the state is obliged to educate its citizens. The sticking point is the difference between ‘education’ which requires openness to facts and critical thinking – and ‘indoctrination’, which requires the rejection of both.
I am obviously against the indoctrination of socialism. Just as I am against the indoctrination of fascism.
But – having a private school with a separate curriculum does not mean that the school is teaching facts and critical thinking. It could very well be indoctrinating – socialism. Or fascism.
We cannot conclude that because it’s private money funding those schools that we can then ignore that these children are being indoctrinated rather than educated.
So, for example, I approve John Tory’s agenda in Ontario to ensure that all Ontarian children receive the same basic education – fact based and critical, by funding all FBS within the requirement that they teach that Ontario curriculum and use registered teachers.
The agenda behind this is not the trivia of ‘not being discriminatory’ or ‘being multicultural’. It’s an agenda of preventing intellectual isolationism developing among the next generation, and instead, developing a common identity and sense of cohesion amongst our next electorate population.
Chavez may be indoctrinating rather than teaching, but – I think we have to be very careful not to confuse the two.
Is Tommy Douglas really dead, or is his clone “alive and hiding in Venezuela”??
“the new citizen,”
There it is, the magic phrase which reveals the agenda to all but the most obtuse.
I shall now await postings from the most obtuse.
Hmmm … “the new citizen” sounds just like the Soviet Union’s “the New Soviet Man”.
He’s following Marx/Lenin to the letter.
The countdown for mass graves is at 4.
“But this is the system in most countries.”
In “most counrties” the state is obligated to provide free education, but it is not required that it be the ONLY source of education.
See the difference?
What’s the tipping point when the sheeple in Venezuela, and Russia for that matter, turn on these thugs? Is the enough-is-enough point when it hits them in their wallets or do they keep grazing with their heads down until the mass graves and gulags return?
I’m not saying it wouldn’t be bloodless, but, the public has more going for it than the old USSR era when there was not the internet, fax’s and cellphones to get organized with. They did take it to the streets when Chavez killed their tv soap operas earlier this year.
Ultimately people get the government they deserve.
“Give us a child until he’s 7, and he’s ours forever.”
the Jesuits
(quoted from memory — I’m sure the exact wording is on the Web somewhere)
I can just see the difference now
old – che guevera murdering thug
new – che guevera freedom fighting hero
old – USA, defender of freedom and democracy
new- USA, nazi germany reincarnate
old – capitalism provides highest standard of living ever
new- capitalists as bad as hitler
old…….well, I think you see the point. Never stop the truth from getting in the way of some good old fashioned brainwashing!
never LET the truth…….
ET – Why you seperate Socialism from Fascism as if they are at opposite ends of the political spectrum? I fail to understand how complete government control of society can be at both ends of the spectrum. The assumption that they are opposites is a result of some of that indoctrination by those that control education.
Reminds me of one of the reasons why I’m so against the Liberal idea of ‘early learning’. I’d much prefer the beer and popcorn crowd over the brain washing experts whose only concern seems to be social engineering.
Andy they are not at opposite ends in fact one prominent fascist with a funny moustache called himself a National Socialist.
However Fascists have never been able to run up the body count the way commies do.
I like the bit about critical thinking. Just don’t think critical of Chavez,
Thankyou, Andy.
This is so typical of Socialists, they are always trying to control information. I was trying to look up the Prince Albert Pulp-mill Company (PAPCO)on the Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan and found that the only mention of it is in a long Socialist rant against Weyerhaeuser. It’s amazing that the NDP can get away with not mentioning PAPCO and all the money it lost. At one point PAPCO was losing $400,000 a day, so rather than try to spin it, they just pretend it never existed.
Have any of you heard about the corens? They are dictating the curriculum re homosexuality in BC and they have their position courtesy of the government of BC. Chavez couldn’t do worse than that.
South America’s version of another Rotten Robert Mugabe in the making.
Indeed, Andy.
When someone has a jackboot to your throat, it doesn’t much matter if it’s the left or right foot.
I have five kids in the seperate education system in Saskatchewan. My experience has been that teachers and administrators within the system seem confused about whether I hired them to teach my children, or whether I have children so they can teach. However, that is not my point.
In an extreme case, here in Canada they will take your children away if you do not educate them in a state approved school. This, on the surface, could appear to resemble what Chavez is promoting.
However, the guidelines for “state approved” are broad, and subsume all sorts of education, and the harm done to the child by the education must outweigh the harm done to the child by the removal.
There is also a sliding scale from public funded education through private funded education to home schooling. I think all you need is to demonstrate that the child can write and do math and you are good to go, although I am not sure.
I would say that there is absolutely no resemblance between what Chavez is promoting and our education system.
andy – I’m quite aware that fascism and socialism/communism are similar, in that they are both utopian, totalitarian, inclusive, reject reason, reject dissent, rely on emotions etc etc.
The difference? Fascism’s utopia is declared to have existed in its mythic past and the agenda is to cleanse the society of its current pathologies to allow a return to purity.
Socialism/communism’s utopia is considered to exist in the historic future and the agenda is to cleanse the society of its current pathologies to allow a MoveOn to purity.
doug – my point isn’t about public vs private education but about the curriculum. I’m concerned about the isolation of immigrant groups or faiths from the rest of the society. The agenda of a society ought to be to enable its citizens to work together within and for that society. So, this requires a basic common curriculum that engenders a sense of commonality and cohesion. Rather than isolation.
ET,
You are trying to rewrite history, the term fascism was coined by Mussolini – who was a socialist school teacher – when he felt socialism wasn’t far enough to the LEFT, not the right. To try and say fascism is the polar opposite of socialism rather than it’s progression is insane.
Sounds like my university…
ET said “Surely the state is obliged to educate its citizens.”
Welcome to the dark side. Your conversion into a Hillary Clinton clone is now complete. As you leave the building, please chant “It takes a village to raise a child.”
…
The state has an interest in seeing that children receive an education.
I’ve been in the system, both public and private. My children are educated at home in the old-fashioned, elitist, manner: private tutoring.
“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.”
Don’t most (if not all) provinces in Canada have a standardized education curriculum? Don’t home schooled kids have to pass a standardized set of tests for each grade?
How is this different from what Venezuela is trying to do? Seems someone is trying to make mountains out of mole-hills here….
trent – where do I say that fascism is the polar opposite of socialism? They are the same – except for the location of their ‘essential nature’, their utopian ideal. The fascist locates that essentialism in the past – ie, at one time, the people were living ‘as they should’ and this state of existence is the ‘essentialist power’ of the people. The socialist/communist utopian ‘essential nature’ is in the future – they’ll reach it, they consider, at some time, but it will take revolutionary zeal and force to achieve it.
Both fascism and socialism/communism are, in their functions – identical. Top down authoritarian, rejection of the individual, rejection of reason, emotional, homogeneous, etc, etc.
tenebris – I’m a Hillary Clinton? No kidding. Look, it’s a basic truism of any society that it must educate/socialize its members to be, members of that society. Hardly an earth-shattering thought and valid in EVERY society ever known. Why? Because our species has no innate knowledge; our knowledge base is socially derived. So, a group – from the community to the nation state, must socialized and educate its members to be, members…Hardly an idea that is confined to democrats or the left. Basic social studies 101.
.
Sadly, Chavez is merely creating more people who will eventually have to be killed by freedom loving Westerners. What a legacy.
.
ET,
You did it again “Both fascism and socialism/communism …” you are trying to make fascism some how seperate and different from socialism, which it is not. You’re sentence should have read: “Fascism,socialism and communism are, in their functions – identical.”
wow, trent – you do have a problem. Calm down.
First – I didn’t use an Either-Or structure which differentiates and separates. My use of Both..And is inclusive. You must know this.
BUT – you are quite wrong. In their basic organizational functions, fascism and socialism/communism are the same, in that both operate via topdown authoritarian govt, both reject individualism, reason, private enterprise, capitalism, democracy. Both operate within and by emotional connections.
Both are utopian, envisaging a state of society of ultimate perfection – if only the presumed weaknesses and pathologies of the current situation are extinguished.
BUT – they have a deep difference in the location of their ultimate utopian purity. As I said, the fascists postulate that at one time, in the past, the mythic past, the people were living in this pure state but have degenerated from it. The task is to expunge the ‘rot’, and allow this essentialist ‘essence’ of the nation to emerge.
The socialist/communist utopian purity hasn’t ever been achieved; it is placed in the future. The same expunging of degenerate ‘rot’ has to be done, via the same violence – so that the pure state of Being the Perfect Egalitarian State, can be achieved.
So- they are similar in operation, but, vitally different as to the location of their ‘essentialist purity’ – an entity, by the way, that both of them consider as Real and not an abstraction.
Keep calm. They have their similarities. And their differences.
Venezuela’s loss is our gain. Expect a “brain drain” of its most productive, educated populace as they flee socialist Venezuela, much as what happened in Cuba in 1959. There is no opportunity for educated, motivated people when the only game in town is socialist mediocrity.
ET,
Ok, I’ll believe that you are not trying to rewrite history. I do find that a lot of people will go to great lengths to try and paint socialism as a utopian dream. They are usually the same people who say 9/11 was an inside job.
The state cannot provide “an education”. The state provides “schooling”. The state cannot but indoctrinate.
Like just about everything else, education would be vastly improved if acquired solely in the free market on your own dime and not indirectly through taxes.
The state cannot teach children “critical thinking”. Critical thinking is anathema to the state.
ET – charitably, clarity is suffering.
“Look, it’s a basic truism of any society that it must educate/socialize its members to be, members of that society.”
You are being both linguistically and logically careless:
The first regards your improper use of the word “must”: you are using it in the sense of “it is essential for”, whereas the primary definition is the imperative.
Granting your freedom to use secondary definition, the second regards the illogical presumption that the only route to ensuring the existence of the state is through state-controlled means. This begs the question! Surely you see this? It lies at the heart of the distinction between freedom and tyranny, between the poles of political thought presently (poorly) articulated as Liberal and Conservative, Democrat and Republican.
Chavez’s plan isn’t much different from John Tory’s. “We’ll give your school funding if you follow the government curriculum [i.e. socialist pap] and only hire teachers which the government deems to be qualified [i.e. indoctrinated with socialist pap in government schools].” Chavez just shouts more, and he doesn’t feel the need to disguise his expansion of government as giving people “choice”.
“Surely the state is obliged to educate its citizens. The sticking point is the difference between ‘education’ which requires openness to facts and critical thinking – and ‘indoctrination’, which requires the rejection of both.”
If the state is obliged to educate its citizens then it must also be obliged to raise their children from birth until the commencement of school, find them employment, feed them, give them health care, and provide for their retirement. Because if private citizens are defective with regard to teaching their kids the ABCs and 123s, then it would be absurd to claim that other than this glaring defect, they are capable of doing all those other things.
So-called conservatives who think they know how much socialism people need versus how much freedom are up to their knees in intellectual quicksand. That’s why they’re going to be such pushovers for Young Trudeau when he gets things rolling in a couple of years or so.
It’ll go like this:
“Sure capitalism is great but …
– because education is an investment in the future, the state is obliged to provide schools
– financial markets must be controlled so that sufficient investment is made in critical industries, to ensure that the investment made in public education is not wasted
– food being a critical resource, its production and distribution must be fully controlled
– energy is also a critical resource and must be nationalized in order to meet the needs of critical industries controlled by government
– lack of adequate transportation endangers the functioning of food and energy distribution, therefore key transportation systems are to be nationalized
– people are taxed so much they can’t afford medical treatment, and the price is extemely high because we control the education and licensing of practictioners, so we must of course provide socialized health care
– since we nationalized everything else, let’s just quit pretending that people deserve any freedom whatsoever, OK? We already won the argument anyways ‘way back when Conservatives started letting us educate their kids.”
“Both fascism and socialism/communism are, in their functions – identical. Top down authoritarian, rejection of the individual, rejection of reason, emotional, homogeneous, …[top-down, authoritarian, socialist drivel snipped] … Basic social studies 101.”
If “Social Studies 101” as taught in government schools is the sum of all knowledge then we are screwed. Forget the nomination process and having an election, just make Trudeau the El Presidente right now, so he can name ET the Education Czar. Get it over with.
trent – that’s a silly comment. Because I say that socialism is utopian is not comparable to a stupid conspiracy theory. You are obviously in favour of socialism! But, if you want to attack someone, like me, who rejects it, then please do so using logic and facts.
tenebris – thanks for allowing me the freedom to use words as I wish.
I’m not saying that the only means for ensuring existence of the state is via state-controlled means. I’m saying that a society (eg a state) must (heh) educate its citizens to be members of that society/state. This includes, for example, knowledge of the language, the history, the basic rules and regulations of normative social behaviour – which includes the economic mode, political mode, legal mode. There’s nothing tyrannical about this; it’s the norm in any society.
Ugh – nope, I disagree with you. The state will naturally educate its citizens to be – members of that society. It is under no obligation to house and feed them. By the way, education isn’t about learning the alphabet or counting to ten.
The rest of your arguments are empty rhetoric. You are forgetting that the capitalist or private market, which operates as a complex network within a society, can handle an economy etc without the need for nationalization.
Education must always be a critical concern in a society; do you suggest that we ought to have schools that, for instance, reject science, reason, logic – and focus only on tarot cards? The population of a society is a primary ‘energy base’ – and must be able to collaborate, work together etc. So – that population must share a language, an understanding of laws, behavioural expectations, basic knowledge of the env’t and so on. Otherwise – you’d have a population operating in random ways, unable to interact and work together constructively.
But – you have different ideas. What are they?
I’m saying that a society (eg a state) must (heh) educate its citizens to be members of that society/state.
But the real question is how. And the real debate is whether or not it is right to imagine that educating all citizens with the same state-approved curriculum is the best method.
In Canada, we see clearly the problems with egalitarianism as it is applied to healthcare. It becomes cumbersome and ineffective.
Why is the education system any different?
School boards have amalgamated themselves to the point that some jurisdictions are larger than some small countries. Contrast this with a system that used to entail a few local men banding together to hammer up a school and some desks and then sit down and hire their own teacher. Some schools thrived, others fell behind. Teachers got fired if the local townspeople didn’t like what was being taught. The people decided.
Overall, students learned more in 8 years than what is now taught in 12.
Why do we cling to state-wide public education with any measure of loyalty? Maybe because we’ve lost sight of our options. Maybe because the convenience of relying on the government to teach our society’s children outweighs the social and educational detriment. I don’t know.
Hugo Chavez reveals the truth in us. We are Venezuela. And we will fight to uphold its values.
Here in Toronto, half of our ‘new citizens’ aspire to be rap artists, basketball players, or gangstas. (Too bad that none of them have the brain cells to figure out what a garbage can is for.)
ET – you are inconsistent. When it suits you, you go all “complex adaptive system” on us. When it doesn’t, you insist on state control for societal survival. “Who decides?” Address the issue: Why must it be the state that does this (education)? The state has an interest, not a responsibility. If you wish to subordinate the individual to the state, say so explicitly.
State control for societal survival is an example of a complex adaptive system. Of course, we could always go back to the good old medieval days, where only those who could afford an education actually got one.
ET, I agree with you. ;>) You can pick yourself off the floor now.
I’m saying that a society (eg a state) must (heh) educate its citizens to be members of that society/state. This includes, for example, knowledge of the language, the history, the basic rules and regulations of normative social behaviour – which includes the economic mode, political mode, legal mode.
That’s been working well.
Leftists/elitists love one size fits all solutions. Leftists/elitists being too incompetent to administer anything else.