Posted on 08/07/2003 1:53:38 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - At Cuba's largest printing press in the island's eastern Holguin province, hundreds of workers toil over a special request from President Fidel Castro.
The Cuban leader has ordered millions of copies of literary classics for an education program started by his ally, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has made the ambitious promise to teach more than a million people to read in three months.
The Venezuelan literacy campaign, which began in July has drawn heavy criticism from Chavez' opponents, who say he wants to "Cubanize" the world's No. 5 oil exporter and will use the education program to deepen his own self-styled revolution.
Indeed, Castro set up a similar project in 1961 sending 250,000 teachers across the country in a yearlong project to teach one million Cubans to read.
But Eliecer Otayza, a former army colleague of Chavez who heads the "Mission Robinson: I Can Do It" program to teach reading and writing skills, dismisses such criticism. The education program, he says, is simply a cultural accord between two countries. The program is named after Simon Bolivar's teacher Simon Rodriguez, nicknamed "Robinson."
"Without a doubt, it is an ambitious plan to educate one million people," said Otayza, president of the INCE national education institute, where the Caribbean accents of Cuban teachers are now a familiar sound. More than 100,000 Venezuelans are to be trained as teachers.
Chavez, who survived a brief coup in 2002 and a crippling oil strike in December and January, says teaching the approximately 1.5 million illiterate people -- about 9 percent of the adult population -- to read is vital to the nation's progress.
The education program is one of several joint projects between Cuba and Venezuela. Under an accord signed between Chavez and Castro in 2000, Venezuela supplies 53,000 barrels of crude daily to Cuba and Havana has sent doctors, sugar industry technicians, sports trainers and agricultural experts to Caracas.
Since his election on a populist platform in 1998, Chavez has moved Venezuela away from traditional allies such as the United States in favor of stronger ties with China, Libya, Iran, Iraq and Cuba.
After Chavez's election, Venezuela voted for the first time against the United Nations resolution condemning human rights violations on the Caribbean island.
REVOLUTIONARY METHODS
Castro's 1961 education campaign, which aimed make one million people literate through a program of phonetic repetition, virtually paralyzed Cuba when about 250,000 volunteers fanned out across the country over a year. But as a result, Communist-run Cuba has one of the highest literacy rates in Latin America.
The Venezuelan program is based on a method developed by Cuban teacher Leonela Relys, who said that within three months, using 65 audiovisual classes and an exercise book, students could learn to write their names, read with minimum proficiency and write simple messages and letters. Cuba is donating 50,000 television sets to aid the literacy drive.
"It is a revolutionary technique," Otayza said. "There are other methods, but this is a revolutionary technique that gets results. It's a Venezuelan-Cuban method we have adopted."
But the program has plenty of skeptics.
"I don't believe it. How are they going to do that in three months when in Cuba it took a yearlong nonstop campaign that covered all corners of the country?" said Ismael Orta, a Cuban educator now settled in Miami.
Orta, who graduated in 1976 from Havana University as a middle school English teacher, acknowledges that many people learned to read and write under the Cuban literacy drive.
"The teachings of the spelling book, which had 15 lessons, ended with a letter which read, 'Now you can read and write. Thank you, Fidel.' People would read it and weep. It was all a show."
REPUBLICAN VALUES
Otayza said that pupils in the Venezuelan program will only be taught "republican" values such as meaning of the national anthem, the tricolor national flag and history of country and its political leaders.
"Our Republican values are all about the birth of Latin America. ... We are reinforcing the elements of cooperation, solidarity and participation," said Ortayza, who was once head of the state security police under the Chavez administration.
But as in Cuba, the Venezuelan students will read at the end of the course a letter of thanks to Chavez.
Government officials say the most promising students in the program will be rewarded with land titles, scholarships, trips to Cuba and even a library with 25 classic books, including works by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, Cuban Nicolas Guillen, Cuban liberation hero Jose Marti and American authors Ernest Hemingway and Jack London.
But the program has riled Venezuelan educators who see politics and not literacy behind the government initiative.
"Cuban has nothing to teach us about literacy programs," said teacher Leonardo Carvajal. "They are selling us worthless trinkets in exchange for 53,000 barrels of oil a day."
(Additional reporting by Ivette Leyva in Miami)
- Chávez's school plans ignite furor in Venezuela ***A new constitution written by Chávez supporters requires all schools to teach ``Bolivarian principles'' ---- a code phrase for Chávez's brand of leftist populism ---- and the pro-Chávez majority in the legislative National Assembly is preparing a bill laying out the exact curriculum. Last month, the president issued Decree 1011, creating a corps of ``itinerant inspectors'' empowered to close schools and fire teachers that don't follow government-set procedures and standards.
``Political commissars,'' Agudo called them. Jaime Manzo, head of the national teachers' union, called it ``a sword hanging over the head of any teacher who refuses to sing Chávez's praises in the classroom.'' Parents' groups and the teachers' union have appealed to the Supreme Court to block the decree and submitted to the assembly an alternate education reform plan that guarantees a ``pluralist education'' and bans ``partisan politics'' from the classroom.
New history texts for fourth- and sixth-graders published in 1999 praised Chávez's coup attempt and branded as ``corrupt oligarchies'' the two parties that ruled Venezuela since the late 1950s, Democratic Action and COPEI. Chávez has also greatly expanded a system of paramilitary classes in public high schools that had long been on the books but were seldom held, portraying them as ``the founding stones of the new Venezuelan man.''
``He is promoting militarism, infecting texts with viruses that foster class hatreds ... and speak against globalization and privatization,'' Raffalli said in an interview. Chávez recently signed a deal with Cuba under which Havana will train Venezuelan teachers and provide educational materials, and Education Minister Hector Navarro last year approved a nationwide essay competition on the life of Argentine-born Cuban revolutionary Ernesto ``Ché'' Guevara.***
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