ie indoctrination.
February 2001 - - Chávez's school plans ignite furor in Venezuela [Excerpt] CARACAS -- With lawsuits and posters saying ``Our Children are not Cubans,'' Venezuelan parents are battling President Hugo Chávez's latest effort to turn the country's schools into indoctrination centers for his leftist ideology.
``We don't want a Communist or Chavista education,'' said Sonya Agudo, mother of two grammar school students and activist in one of the dozens of parents' groups formed recently to fight the president's plans.
Chávez has kept Venezuela in a state of high turmoil since his election 25 months ago by pushing for his ``Bolivarian revolution'' -- profound yet peaceful changes across virtually every sector of the oil-rich nation.
But the former army officer who led a failed coup in 1992 has touched an especially raw nerve by insisting that the reforms in the education sector should be aimed at ensuring the ``irreversibility'' of his revolution.
Parents and teachers' unions complain that Chávez is not merely fixing problems, but rather trying to establish a Cuba-like system of political indoctrination for young minds. Among the controversial actions:
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. [End Excerpt]