Once again it is in the news. The Government vs what Parents want their kids to study. Florida passed a law. This law is up for a debate. Who should teach the children of America moral issues?
Thought modeling begins at an early age, when the most vulnerable sector of society, children, are the victim of the ideologization process through different channels. While the question of the rights of parents in the education of their children is new to the American national debate, it has been answered by totalitarian regimes long ago. An answer that may be the end of our freedoms.
by Maibort Petit
Freedom Voice
Maibort Petit is a Venezuelan writer, researcher and political scientist specialized in Transnational Organized Crime. Based in New York, she works for various Hispanic media outlets and as a consultant for various firms in New York and Washington DC.
Freedom Voice Reports which is an Investigative Reporting team, started over 25 years ago, with an emphasis on protecting our freedoms. Reporting on authoritative government, dark money used by business to persuade our political institutions, our court system, drug trafficking stealing so many lives, parental rights being lost in our educational system and so much more.
Totalitarian regimes require an inert, submissive, obedient and, above all, non-questioning people, something difficult to achieve in a society accustomed to the freedom that democracy offers, for which, then, they must resort to the application of different methods. destined to change and mold the thinking of citizens to their interests.
Brainwashing applies to the adult population,
while
indoctrination is the formula in the case of the most vulnerable sector of society: children.
The regime that emerged in December 1998 with the election of Hugo Chávez Frías as president of Venezuela was not immune to this type of procedure.
Its first step in establishing itself in power
was to destroy the institutionality
through the establishment of a new National Assembly,
draw up a new Constitution
and proceeded to take the first steps in the
demolition of the fundamental institutions of the country, or better, of its democracy and of its foundations.
The action aimed at the transformation of the citizen from a democratic citizen to a socialist militant.
A task that had to start from an early age.
For a long time, there was insistent circulation that the government planned to establish parental authority through the new Organic Law of Education that was being discussed by the National Assembly. This was not something difficult to believe, since the government since 2006 has acted at its whim because the National Legislative Power was in absolute Chavista control as the opposition had withdrawn from the parliamentary elections that took place on December 4, 2005 .
Totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union put into practice this type of
control over the children of the population of their countries,
implementing parental authority in the hands of the State.
Let's get the word out when Freedoms and your country is threatened.
Venezuelan civil society - even at that time with the capacity to maneuver and act - mobilized and was successful. The Minister of Education at the time, Héctor Navarro, stepped out and denied that this was part of the bill that would be discussed in the Legislative Power and assured that such a rumor was only the product of "a campaign based on lies."
Minister Navarro assured that the claim stating that the new law would
deprive the family of parental authority was a falsehood broadcast through Miami stations, whose broadcasts argued that
But whether or not it has been true that the Chávez regime has tried to implement state parental authority, there is no doubt about its firm intention to indoctrinate minors.
"Don't mess with my children"
One of those first attempts by Chávez was Presidential Decree 1011 of October of that year, with which the Regulation of the Exercise of the Teaching Profession was partially modified by instituting itinerant supervisors with broad powers over the schools and which posed as a threat to private education. In addition, it allowed the participation of Cuban teachers in the literacy plans implemented by the government [2].
The response from civil society was forceful and popularized through the slogan
"Don't mess with my children"
and the government was forced to desist from its implementation.
Resolution 058
It does not mean that there have not been attempts by the Chavista government to change the educational system, its politicization and its intervention.
According to some say, since 1999 on eighteen occasions such intervention of the schools was attempted until in 2012 the matter was included in Resolution 058 of the Ministry of Popular Power for Education, by means of which the Educational Council was established. This measure repealed Resolution 751 in force since November 10, 1986, Resolution 114 of February 19, 1987, and 1675 of October 31, 1997.
This Resolution 751 dealt with the Educational Community
“as a democratic and participatory institution, to the purposes of contributing to the development of educational management; formed by educators, parents or representatives and students of each Campus, providing optional participation of other people linked to the development of the Community in general,
These members of the Educational Community were organized through the Advisory Council, the Teachers, the Society of Parents and Representatives and the Student Organization. When resolution 751 was repealed, said organs that gave operation to the Educational Community were then suppressed.
The Educational Community, according to the Organic Law of Education of 2009, defined the Educational Community as “(…) a democratic space, of a social community nature, organized, participatory, cooperative, leading and supportive. Its members will act in the citizen education process in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution of the Republic, laws and other norms that govern the Educational System. To this end, the educational community is made up of parents, representatives, managers, students, teachers, administrative workers and administrative workers, workers of educational institutions and centers, from initial education to general secondary education and technical media and all modalities of the basic education subsystem.
"Natural and legal persons, spokespersons and spokespersons of the different community organizations linked to educational institutions and centers may also form part of the educational community."
The Organic Law of Education promulgated by Chavismo modified, as can be seen, the constitution of the Educational Community which, until then, as we saw above, was made up only of "educators, parents or representatives and students."
Resolution No. DM / 058 that was published on October 16, 2012 in Official Gazette No. 40,029 established the Educational Councils, which would be the only organizational instances of the Educational Community and that were defined as (…) the executive instance, of a social, democratic, responsible and co-responsible nature for the management of educational public policies in inter- and intra-institutional articulation and with other social organizations in educational institutions. It is conceived as the set of social groups linked to educational centers within the constitutional framework and within the powers of the Teaching State. Its members will act in the educational process in accordance with the provisions of the laws that govern the Venezuelan Educational System, based on the doctrine of our Liberator Simón Bolívar ”.
The Educational Councils would be integrated "fathers, mothers, representatives, managers, students, teachers, workers and administrative workers, workers and workers of educational institutions, from initial education to general secondary and technical secondary education and all the modalities of the subsystem of basic education. Natural and legal persons, spokespersons and spokespersons for the different community organizations linked to educational institutions may also form part of the educational community ”.
The government initiative set off the alarms of Venezuelan civil society that saw in the resolution the intention to politicize education,
as warned by Olatz Isasi,
Academic Coordinator of the UCAB Center for Human Rights,
who emphasizes that, although it did not appear to violate the right to education it did open spaces for such politicization.
Isasi highlighted that, in one of its recitals, the resolution stated that “school environments are open spaces 365 days a year for teaching and learning, democratic practice and the transformation of the institutional structure necessary for the development of popular power. ”While the People's Power has as one of its purposes (…) to build the foundations of a socialist, democratic, law and justice society”,
making repeated references to communal councils and social groups as members of the committees of the Educational Council with interference in planning, execution, monitoring, control, supervision and evaluation within educational institutions.
In this sense, the expert warned of the possibility that the school could become a space of ideologization that threatens
The changed letter
But the decrees, legislative reforms and administrative resolutions have not been the only mechanisms implemented by Chavismo to specify its objective of indoctrination of Venezuelan children and adolescents, but also through the content of textbooks and educational curricula.
The distortion of history, the magnification of the figure of Hugo Chávez and the minimization of the democratic period between 1958 and 1998, are also part of the strategy of ideologizing minors.
Former education minister, Maryann Hanson, said it without restriction:
"We know, and everyone knows, that education is the reproductive apparatus of the state. We are trying to create a socialist state and we have to reproduce the ideology of a socialist state, while implementing the distribution of 5 million copies of the 1999 Constitution" illustrated "in public schools.
Another minister of the office who was not shy about admitting the fact was Aristóbulo Istúriz, who stated that the government was indeed trying to use education as a vehicle for indoctrination.
A version of the Magna Carta that, according to the NGO Assembly of Education, initiated the ideologization process through the texts with which Venezuelan children are formed. The "Bicentennial Collection" that collects subjects on Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Language and Mathematics was also used for this purpose. The revision of the texts of Social Sciences allowed to verify, for example, that 20 pages condensed the assets of 9 Venezuelan presidents, while Hugo Chávez dedicates 26 pages to him and even equates it to the liberator Simón Bolívar
Books that sing odes to Hugo Chávez, practically praised as a national hero, extol the government policies of Chavismo and exaggerate the "revolution" at the level of the libertarian campaign.
Analysts such as Daniel Lansberg-Rodríguez classified such action as the mediocretization and ideologization of Venezuelan public education.
With Maduro the indoctrination continues
The indoctrination of infants and adolescents is not an activity that would have disappeared with the death of Chávez, but is maintained and deepened by the regime of Nicolás Maduro, who in September 2020 was denounced by the organization Prensa Sin Mordaza for having formed camps. concentration aimed at the indoctrination of children.
According to the complainants, it is about "revolutionary youth camps" in which minors are taught the communist political and military thought of the late Hugo Chávez.
The complaint, which was accompanied by a video, indicates that one of these alleged camps is located on the outskirts of Valencia, Carabobo state. There, children and tweens would be trained to "fight the Yankee empire."
In the aforementioned video [8] it is possible to see the testimony of a minor from these fields in which he speaks of the "revolutionary struggle and the battle against the United States" [9].
The boy says that in the countryside “they have given him great ideological training, something very important for the youth. And, well, I'm here for that, for a training and to be a great future for Venezuela, one more young man who will do a bit for Venezuela, to be a power, to invest here a potential in Venezuela.
They ask him what the ideological training is about and the minor indicates that it is about learning the
“thought of Chávez, something that he instilled in us, something very important, he did not indoctrinate us, nor put us, nor tell us, he formed us."
The United States does not have the history of politicization of their children's education. The movements of Critical Race Theory and anti-american teachings have dominated the debates over who should have a say in our choldren's education. We just need to look at Venezuela, North Korea, China, Cuba and like regimes to see the results when we begin implementing parental authority in the hands of the State.
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