Indoctrination in the idiocy of socialism in Venezuela

Washington Post:

At the sprawling Fermin Toro School, students take classes that extol President Hugo Chávez's brand of socialism and highlight the menace posed by the imperial power to the north, the United States.

Teachers file into workshops every afternoon to celebrate the government's self-sustaining economic model and its superiority over Washington's "neoliberal" one.

In virtually every activity at the school, administrators say, the goal is to help create "a new man," instilled with communal values, filled with love for the republic and ready to battle "internal or external aggression" against Venezuela.

"What's the kind of citizen we want?" said Principal Juana Sierra, who has pictures of Chávez and Argentine revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara arranged under a glass desktop. "A Venezuelan who's highly humanistic, with solidarity, who knows his history, who knows the Venezuelan Indian, who knows all the resources the fatherland has, who knows the history of oil, about why we're so dependent, about why we're underdeveloped."

The school here in Caracas exemplifies the Venezuelan government's approach to education, one that amounts to the latest phase in a decade-long revolution that has seen Chávez steadily extend his influence over the legislature, the judicial system, local governments and the military. Officials are planning to overhaul schools and install a curriculum that hails collectivism over individualism and socialism over capitalism, with an emphasis on what Chávez perceives as Washington's desire for world domination.

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This is criminal in its stupidity. Socialism and communism have been abject failures everywhere. They make everyone poorer and they punish achievers. This is a dumb as memorizing ancient religious texts and expecting people to be "educated." What Chavez is doing will condemn this generation of Venezuela's youth to a poverty of educational opportunities and support a corrupt system of government. The command economy is one of the most ridiculous business models ever devised.