EDUCATION-VENEZUELA: Community Schooling, the New Alternative

By Humberto Márquez Reprint | | Print |

Humberto Marquez

CARACAS, May 27 1996 (IPS) - Parents in Venezuela, faced with the struggling State education system or profit-motive private schools are opting for an exciting new alternative, the community school – run by the parents, governors and teachers themselves.

The community school offers new, more transparent and flexible forms of management, and a holistic education “unafraid of liberty,” where students are taught to blend the idea of duty with their critical faculties, and not just swallow chunks of information whole.

“Democracy and authoritarianism are opposites,” said Ana Camposano, director of the Modern Community School in Bello Monte (Caracas), “meaning that if there is a democratic structure in the school it is easier to apply a model of participatory education.”

She explained that the philosophy would be difficult to adopt in either the traditional State establishments or private institutions as the management ethos plays an essential part in the running of the school.

“A participatory model could make the teachers in private schools less motivated, as their owners are motivated by profit, or public ones like those in Venezuela, which belong to a State which is practically an absentee and does not demand quality,” Camposano told IPS.

So far, nine community schools have been opened in the country, and they are all members of an association headed by Camposano.

Her argument is that communities must organise themselves, and demand that the government – central, regional or municipal – grant them some autonomy with the funding.

A traditional school “is vertical, non-participatory, parents and children lack the right to decide what they want and need, and the teachers have to do exactly what the directors or the owners decide,” she said.

The model developed in her school “supposes that education does not mean imposing limits, correcting or straightening out, offering all knowledge in a directed manner, but liberation and developing the capacities of the child reelaborate this knowledge,” she added.

Mary Diaz, a preschool teacher, said “in this school independence, both individual and collective, is developed,” so that “the child emerges unharmed by preschool, that is, that they have developed some decision-making independence and a certain autonomy.”

Taylor Uzcatequi, engineer and mother, took her daughter out of a “well renowned” school to put her into Bello Monte.

“At first it took her a while to adapt, because she was used to repeating, memorising and questionaires, and here they ask for analysis and comprehension, but now she never wants to leave school,” she said.

Other parents also stated that “if the children learn something here, it is to defend their rights,” adding that “the meetings where we discuss the education the children will receive” are one of the most important factors in their satisfaction.

The former pupils, those children who completed six of the nine compulsory years of basic education in the school and then went to secondary school, are those who are most grateful for the experience.

“I still haven’t lost the capacity to create, but the freedom has gone. You keep your creativity, because it is innate, but the problem is how to develop it,” said Alexandra Salamanenques.

“Education here is about orientation, of how to behave when faced with different experiences,” added Cesar Casal.

Zaira Castro said she was “studying a lot…I’ve still got the habit of studying which I learnt there.”

Meanwhile, Valentina Fraiz said, “there are parents who have thought that being in this school the children won’t be able to adapt to other systems, but its the other way around, because they have been taught to be independent.”

As a contrast, the general level of literacy in the nation has been shown to be low. In an international survey of reading comprehension in 1992 – 1993 in 32 countries, Venezuelan children came only slightly above the levels of Botswana, Nigeria and Zimbabwe, while the nation’s nine year-olds were the worst in the world.

In the last few years, Venezuela has spent two billion dollars per year, or 20 percent of the State budget, on education, meaning expenditure of nearly 300 dollars per pupil, but 70 percent of the funds go on the payroll and other administrative expenses.

“The outcome of this has been schools without philosophies, without plans to improve the quality of the education they provide, lacking heads with leadership skills, without necessary authority to sack a teacher who is working badly,” said Camposano.

Public schooling “is treated as though it doesn’t belong to anybody, belonging to a State which has a constitutional duty to provide education, but which goes unseen in the hands of supervisors who are really just paper pushers,” she added.

The association she heads tries to promote community education, with communities organised from the moment the urban planners are called in to develop new areas, in order to take on the management of the schools along with the teachers.

Another mechanism which would help the process would be the transfer of resources from the central State to the local and neighbourhood administrations, something “which does not go against either the general programmes of the ministry of education, nor the principle of free education.”

“There could be schools where everyone contributes: the State: the basic matierials, the community: care and leadership and the teachers: the effort to contain the drop out rates,” said Camposano.

In El Salvador, the State has already transferred resources directly to the communities, in Nicaragua associations of teachers developed projects where the drop-out rate fell to almost zero, and a similar path is being followed in Minas Gerais, Brazil.

A third option would be the involvement of the private sector, and Just such a proposal has been made to extend the Bello Monte school, a middle class so far, to absorb a nearby working-class catchment area.