Rural children are a focus of Educational Missions
Illiteracy & Educational Discrimination
Imagine growing up
in one of the richest oil countries in the world. A country of immense natural
resources that could be used to ensure that all citizens had access to equal
opportunities in education, so that citizens could develop themselves and make
a contribution to society.
Imagine, however,
that your government failed to share the nation’s resources fairly, and left
millions literally in the dark. Without the basic tools of reading and writing,
the foundations of democracy are inaccessible to you. Last summer, the
Venezuelan government launched a series of sweeping educational initiatives to
combat the learning gap that had historically plagued the nation’s poor.
Establishing thousands of local, volunteer-based schools in rural communities
and urban slums across the Caribbean nation, the initiatives have made
remarkable progress.
This July, Venezuela and educators from around the world will celebrate
the 1.2 million adults who have been taught to read in the first year of these
programs. The country is now on track to achieve a near-complete elimination of
illiteracy.
Just ten years ago, Venezuela’s illiteracy rate was nearly 9%, or about 2 million people, primarily in rural Indigenous communities and poor inner-city families. Under previous governments, students had been required to pay fees to attend public schools, which in practice excluded the most needy from receiving basic education. The most remote parts of the country had no schools at all, and government spending on public schools declined steadily throughout the 1990s. Although the country enjoyed immense oil wealth, the government – in alliance with the elites – made little effort to eradicate this plague of illiteracy and educational discrimination.
By 1998,
Venezuelans had grown tired of their governments’ ignoring of their basic
needs. They turned to the ballot box and elected Hugo Chávez Frías, a leader
with a mandate to increase opportunities for the country’s poor, focusing on
education, health care and land reform. The government quickly eliminated fees
for public schools. They codified the right to education into a brand new
Constitution, which was approved in by over 87% of the electorate. Under the
new Constitution, Hugo Chávez was again elected to the Presidency with almost
60% of the popular vote – a huge vote of confidence for the new Constitution
and the social programs addressing the needs of the country’s majority poor
population.
School Boom
under the Chávez Administration
To meet the demand
for primary education, Venezuelan leaders deployed the military to an ambitious
school construction project in 2000. Within four years, more than 3000 new
schools had been built. School attendance at all levels had jumped 25% by 2002,
representing approximately 1.3 million students who had previously been left
out of the system. During a 2001 visit to Venezuela, The Director General of
the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO),
Koichiro Matsuura, lauded Venezuela’s education initiatives as well as its
increase in education spending to 6 percent of GDP—far above the 3.9 percent
average in developing countries.
Still, geographic
and economic barriers remained, particularly in regions where traditional
school districts The Venezuela
Information Office is dedicated to informing the American public about
contemporary Venezuela, and receives its funding from the government of
Venezuela. Further Information is available from the department of Justice in
Washington, DC. were not
feasible. The country has recently found success in a novel series of
government-sponsored “missions” to reach underserved regions. The educational
missions are each named after prominent figures in Venezuelan history, and
weave lessons of history and civic responsibility together with reading and
mathematical skills.
Mission
Robinson: Literacy for Everyone
Mission Robinson
is named after Simon Rodriguez, a private tutor to Latin American liberator
Simon Bolívar who often traveled under the pseudonym Samuel Robinson. The most
significant campaign in Venezuela’s battle against illiteracy, Mission Robinson
Today, some 100,000 educated volunteers spend evenings teaching basic reading,
writing and math skills to adults in small night classes around the country.
The key has been to establish night schools in virtually every corner of the
nation, making them accessible to adults with families and full-time jobs.
Venezuela’s state universities try to instill a renewed sense of community
responsibility among their students and alumni, and college students make up
the majority of mission volunteers. In its first year, more than 1 million
people have graduated from Mission Robinson programs. Literacy graduates
then have the opportunity to continue on to earn an elementary school
equivalency with two more years of classes.
Mission Ribas:
Back to High School
Adults who have
dropped out of high school can obtain a diploma through an expedited program
named after Jose Felix Ribas, a philosophical and military leader of Venezuelan
Independence. Mission Ribas, which teaches mathematics, geography, advanced
grammar, and English as a second language, may be completed within two years,
about half the time of a standard high school program.
Like all of
Venezuela’s educational missions, the programs at Ribas are free, but the
government has set aside grants for 100,000 participants to be compensated for
time that could otherwise be spent working. Graduates of Mission Ribas are
offered assistance in jobhunting as well. About 1.4 million people are
currently enrolled in the program.
Mission Sucre:
Access to Higher Education
Named after
independence hero General Antonio Jose de Sucre, Mission Sucre acts essentially
as a scholarship program for higher education. Need-based grants are given out
to 100,000 Venezuelans each year to offset the costs of state universities, and
will open the doors of higher education to bright students who would have been
financially barred from universities in the past. They have also founded a
brand-new Bolivarian University of Venezuela, the UBV, in an unused building
that was the former headquarters of the national oil company. As one
sixty-year-old housewife participant in Robinson remarked, “I feel as though
my President has personally called on me to come to school, because we have a
participatory democracy in Venezuela, and to participate, I should learn to
read and write. I have completed Mission Robinson, and hope to graduate and
move through Mission Ribas. And who knows, maybe someday I’ll go to Mission
Sucre –and get a chance to go to college.”
The Future in
Jeopardy
The efforts of the Venezuelan government and civil society have put the
country on track to become a Latin American leader in literacy, but outside
forces could derail the progress. The traditional elites oppose the
government’s efforts to share the national resources of Venezuela with the
entire country. In April of 2002, the opposition organized a coup d’etat
against democractically-elected President Chávez, who was restored to office
within two days because of a massive outpouring of citizens in the streets. The
United States government has illegally funded leaders of that coup, in their
effort to get the President removed from office. Venezuelan citizens, enjoying
the light of literacy for the first time, deserve support of US citizens
opposed to illegal interference in their democratic process. We in the US have
a responsibility to ensure that our leaders respect Venezuela’s democracy and
the right of the people to choose their own government.
Venezuela Information Office
733 15th Street NW, Suite 932
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 347-8081
The
Venezuela Information Office is dedicated to informing the American public
about contemporary Venezuela, and receives its funding from the government of
Venezuela. Further information is
available from the FARA office of the Department of Justice in Washington, DC.