Caracas, April 7 ABN (Lena Jahn).- As part of the public policies progressed by the National Government in matters of human and social rights, the Curricular Model of the Bolivarian Education System places as the spearhead of the process of improving education in Venezuela, once the primary goal of inclusion is achieved.
Around 320 thousand teachers of the whole country have taken part in the different workshops to create the new Curricular Model, carried out at national, state and municipal level, since December 2007 until now; and around the debate have arouse different proposals, observations and considerations necessary for the definite structuring of this model.
Precisely due to being widely debated, the president of the Republic, Hugo Chávez Frías, proposed to submit it to a referendum perhaps for next year, at the time he invited the Venezuelan opposition to present their own proposal, just as the Government is doing.
In fact, this is not an isolated issue. During the coming days, the World Peace and Anti-imperialist Conference, to take place in Caracas, as part of its schedule will tackle with the defense of the rights of the nations of the world, among them education, linked to the repressive actions and domination on behalf of the United States and suffered mainly by Latin American nations.
In Venezuela, the education issue is not out of the discussion, neither is foreseen to retire it from the scenery during a long time. On the contrary, it is every time more noticeable the discussion of a human right and of basic social duty that, besides a constitutional article which defines it, has ten years materializing through public policies that make feasible the legal framework.
From the neoliberal model to the education's democratization
Talking about education in Venezuela and, even more, about the direct influences that the United States has played upon this important area for development requires a hindsight that covers at least the last 20 years of national and international history.
'In the world dynamics of the nineties and the eighties were boosted policies addressed to privatize the educational spaces. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the crumble of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (USSR) is imposed a capitalist ideological and political model in Latin America which fosters a paradigm of decentralization and privatization of the educational sceneries.'
The analysis corresponds to the general director of the International Relations from the Ministry of People's Power for Education, Luis Alejandro Sauce, who affirms that statements as individualism and mass production of economic resources, proper form the capitalist model, led to the misunderstood necessity of privatizing education due to arguments like the State could not satisfy the educational demand nor sustain the infrastructure because it was inefficient and incapable.
'In the Venezuelan case, infrastructure was abandoned, investment was abandoned, the rate of schooling registration diminished, and it showed that the State should take part in education. However, behind that imposed the ideological and political model of the capital. This model called to privatize education because it is a profitable space by nature since everybody want to study, at the time it favored the perfect path to control the production, generation and supply of knowledge,' he explained.
In other words, the education offered by the State was effectively deficient, but that answered to a strategy of power with a political aim.
Sauce commented that while the financial control was exerted by the World Bank, the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund made the same with the political and economic power, respectively.
'They took part on education policies and it were even created, at the then Ministry of Education, offices that stimulated -allegedly- the development of a competitive education in negative, unequal and excluding terms for the people of low economic resources,' he affirmed.
Thus, the parameters that defined education, according the 1961 Constitution, were not in keeping with the public policies because there was no coherence between the legal dispositions and the sociopolitical scenery.
Fortunately, Venezuela reacted first with the Caracazo (wave of protests, riots and looting that occurred in Caracas) in 1989, to the package of neoliberal measures, and started the rupture of a political, economic and social process that was the starting point for the breaking-off of the constitutionality in political terms.
Nevertheless, the representative of the education office affirmed that the highest rupture was in 1998, when president Chávez came to power. 'On the reconfiguration of the new State is given expression to the basic idea of retaking education as a human right, which guarantees it to be free, accessible, plural and democratic nature,' he expressed.
This way came up a Constituent Assembly and a new Constitution which confirms a series of social rights considered as the central axis of the national state's transformation and the jump to the real democratization of education.
First step, Inclusion
With the arrival of Hugo Chávez at the presidency of the Republic, besides generating a new political and legal structure of the State, it is showed the political will of attending the education sector in order to make the legal framework correspond with reality.
Among the measures taken, the percentage of the Gross Domestic Product allocated to education increased from 2% to 7%, at the time that the schooling registration went from 5 million 800 thousand students in the school period 1996-1997 up to 11 millions 800 in the period 2006-2007.
'In education exists knowledge, wisdom to build a country, to develop a nation and achieve independence, improvement and sovereignty of the nations; and, finally, the State understood that in order to achieve this it should rule this sector and invest on it,' indicated Sauce.
Among the actions to carry out, the Revolutionary Government started with educational missions as leading projects, oriented to guarantee the right to education to those who discarded the option of studying due to the necessity of entering the labor world.
This way came up Mission Robinson I, oriented to the literacy of more than a million 500 patriots; and Mission Robinson II, in order to continue primary studies, in which -according to information given by the General Direction of Situational Analysis of the education office- are studying 258 thousand 826 Venezuelan, besides the 395 thousand 302 who have already graduated.
Other missions, as Ribas and Sucre, offer access to secondary and university education to people in the same conditions of social exclusion, result of the schemes of power that had ruled and which let out those who had no possibilities to pay studies in private institutions.
Additionally, in Venezuela is guaranteed the right to food for more than 4 million children and young people, through the Program of School Feeding (PAE, for Spanish), addressed to strengthen the academic return of students.
In educational matters, it is interesting to check out articles in the constitutional framework as the 103, in which is recognized early education starting since nursery school, with which Venezuela becomes the first country in the continent to guarantee education since they are given birth. This way started the Simoncitos, educational institutions with pedagogical characteristics designed for children since zero to six years old.
Likewise, article 106 not only recognizes but also fills with constitutional nature the private education under the strict inspection and surveillance of the State and under previous acceptance of this one. According to Sauce, private education is not infringed since there are the structural conditions required and the supreme aim of education predominating over profitability.
There are also dispositions to count with a system of special education, which is currently one of the spaces of the ministry's workshop, created as part of the attention and protection policy for disabled people who, consequently, have special education needs and have always belonged to the traditionally excluded groups.
The goal, high quality education
'The scheme of work of the Bolivarian Government has been, firstly, social inclusion, to then go to the improvement, high quality education,' stated Luis Alejandro Sauce.
That way began the need for a new curriculum that fits no only in appearance but also in essence to the constitutional rules referring to the integral, democratic, participatory and permanent nature of education.
Learning to create, learning to coexist and participate, learning to value the basic mainstay of the Bolivarian Curricular Model, all of it closely related with human rights.
'Having the opportunity to distinguish and construct under your own principles, views, ideologies, as master Simon Rodriguez said, either we invent or we err, we cannot import models,' expressed Sauce. He also affirms that there are sectors which with a deep ignorance disown themselves when obviating in the new curriculum proposals as the possibility of creating, which influence in the possibility of being free.
'We foster other human rights, as the diversity of thought, coexistence in a plural, democratic, participatory space,' he added.
Sauce stated as well that the debate of this curriculum should take place in a political context but also in the pedagogical and philosophical, 'Mass media have limited it to the political space, but they obviate that it is the first time in the democratic history of Venezuela that education guidelines are being submitted to a discussion and to the collective construction.'
The director explained that it deals with a great social debt inherited due to the imposition of a scheme that influenced in the education dynamics of the complete continent; a model that intended to privatize and control the creation and production of knowledge in order to dominate nations.
Thus, he insistsed on that improving education will be done just if people feel part of a curriculum and collaborate with their contributions for the structuring of an original and homegrown education.
'What a better democratic exercise that bestowing the new curriculum at everybody's disposal, which links to a scenery of full exercise of human rights?', he wonders. Now, with the president's proposal of holding a referendum to decide the fate of this project, the sovereign practice and people's power are highlighted once more in Venezuela.
Translated by Felitza Nava López
No comments:
Post a Comment