Posted by
JTB on Monday, September 17, 2007 5:43:29 PM
Venezuela's Chavez warns private schools
(Original from Yahoo, amateurish fisking from yours truly)
By IAN JAMES, Associated Press Writer Mon Sep 17, 1:27 PM ET
CARACAS, Venezuela - 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.
Very Progressive of him! Just ask Sean Penn or Cindy Sheehan...
"Society cannot allow the private sector to do whatever it wants," said Chavez, speaking on the first day of classes.
But the Lefties eat his pseudo-commie carp like it was ambrosia? And they complain about Bush!
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.
"You have the right to remain silent," a Chavez spokesman told a government critic...
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.
"When we want your opinion," the government told educators, "we'll give it to you."
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.
Correct thinking, he meant to say... Where are the MSM comparisons to Orwell now that it's REALLY happening in our Hemisphere?
Just what the new curriculum will include and how it will be applied to all Venezuelan schools and universities remains unclear.
Yeah. Really unclear. Because, as we all know, Mr. Chavez has been so difficult to figure out...
"We want to create our own ideology collectively — creative, diverse," the president said, adding that it would help develop values of "cooperation and solidarity."
"Diverse" meaning everyone thinks, acts, and breathes the Party Line... Whatever that happens to be at the time...
All schools will be bound to "subordinate themselves to the constitution" and comply with the "new Bolivarian educational system," he said, referring to his socialist movement named after South American independence hero Simon Bolivar.
Kinda sad and kinda funny, actually... Bolivar initially fought against guys like Chavez; but eventually became a dictator because he was unable to convince his neighbors to cede power to a central government. Effectively deposed in 1830, he died a painful death of tuberculosis while preparing to return to Europe in ignominy...