Caracas Chronicles

Over at Foreign Policy’s Transitions blog, I try and explain just why Venezuelan parents are incensed. The value added:

In order to “promote participatory democracy,” the resolution states that all decisions in every school — public or private — must involve parents, teachers, students, workers, and even “the community,” represented by “communal councils.” Including communal councils in these decisions is done in order to “construct a new model of socialist society.” Many in the opposition view this as the last straw in a long line of attacks against the rights of parents to freely educate their children. While the government has talked of making schools epicenters of socialist indoctrination for years, they had not acted upon those wishes until now. Many thought the decree would never be implemented, but lately the government has started making good on its ill-favored promise, so the issue has come up again… with a vengeance.

Writing this one was a challenge – the problem has a lot of layers and details, and the concept of indoctrination can be hard to pin down. Luckily, the pictures of the new Constitution being distributed … made my job so much easier. Thanks for that.