In May, 2009, the Chavez government signed a new collective bargaining agreement with the nation's teachers union which gives teachers in Venezuela a raise of 30%. With this raise, teachers here have seen their salaries and benefits increases by 700% over what they were receiving before Hugo Chavez was elected president in 1998. (See "Venezuela Increases Public Teacher Salaries by 30%" by James Suggett at http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/...
Coupled with recognizing the importance of teachers to Venezuelan progress by increasing their salaries, the Chavez government has begun a nation-wide Reading Campaign to assist the intellectual development of all its citizens by providing thousands of free books, films and live performances throughout the country. Events are taking place in town squares where the government's Cultural Mission, called El Corazon Adentro or "Heart Within [the community]", distributes the free books and provide dance, drama and song presentations related to Venezuelan culture and history:
"Chávez announced that under this plan, the government will distribute 2.5 million books develop the communal libraries and said part of the plan was a "rescuing of our true history for our youth." He explained that many standard textbooks do not acknowledge the European imperialist genocide of the indigenous peoples and their resistance".
As Fidel Castro said this week upon congratulating Hugo Chavez for the 10th anniversary of Chavez's weekly live television program, "Alo Presidente", Chavez is himself an "indefatigable teacher" ("educador infatigable"). To commemorate the anniversary, President Chavez is conducting a virtual televised teach-in marathon, wherein Alo is in continuous broadcast for four days in which Chavez is encouraging cultural awareness through drama, dance and song and self-education through reading.
Any one who has watched President Chavez on his TV program or heard him speak in public, can attest, Chavez regularly shares his immense intellectual curiosity with everyone he talks with, frequently pulling a book out and reading selected quotations to his audience. At his first encounter with President Barack Obama at an international conference earlier this month, President Chavez gave President Obama a history of colonial exploitation in Latin American, Open Veins of Latin America, by Eduardo Galeano.. And, appearing before the United Nations in September of 2006, President Chavez read a quotation from Noam Chomsky. In both cases, these authors' books shot to the top of Amazon charts. Chavez routinely reads from and recommends books to his audiences, encouraging them to read a diverse array of political and social literature, including poetry.
The government's Mission Robinson literacy campaign has been a great success. As of May, 2009, even the CIA's Factbook calculates the rate at 93%. Mission Ribas has brought high school diplomas within the reach of millions, while the Bolivarian universities provide access to higher academic levels for hundreds of thousands more. A national campaign to bring computer and information technology literacy to the country has opened more than 700 free "information centers and mobile info buses to teach computer skills throughout Venezuela. Many more are planned.
Chavez has shown his commitement to universal education by the most concrete means possible: increasing their salaries and benefits and repeatedly encouraging his citizens to read. Let us hope that President Obama will put a few trillion into universal, free American education and literacy rather than merely into the big pockets of a few, ivy league educated banksters.