[NYTr] Venezuela's Chavez may take over schools

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

AP via Yahoo - Sep 17, 2007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070917/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/venezuela_socialist_education

Venezuela's Chavez may take over schools

By IAN JAMES, Associated Press Writer

CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuelan 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.

"Society cannot allow the private sector to do whatever it wants," said
Chavez, speaking on the first day of classes.

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.

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.

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.