History allows us to write and investigate things that are not made public. The crisis in my country will only end with a change of mentality and this necessarily comes with education.
Through the new primary school textbooks, the government is trying to ideologize the children of my country, with an extremely biased vision of the country's history.
The new textbooks, plagued with content errors, show a great manipulation of concepts and facts, and place former President Hugo Chávez -deceased in January 2013- on a pedestal unreachable even for the Liberator of Venezuela, Simón Bolívar.
The socialist government did not prepare teachers in the new pedagogical techniques and focuses only on books because they are the ideal instrument to impose a unique thought to children.
The National Executive has made undeniable efforts to try to redefine the historical facts with a clear ideological tendency and the books express that intention.
For me, these books are ideological pamphlets that present the uprasing suffered by Chávez in 2002 as an insurrection supported by a foreign country, downplaying the importance of the massive opposition protests that arose against him during the last few years.
In the face of the government's fallacy and arbitrariness, the creation of a new project that raises and vindicates the democratic principles of education is necessary.
The practices of these regimes with respect to policies directed at the education sector are widely known. In authoritarian regimes, an openly ideological policy in favor of the regime is carried out in schools. This has become clear in fascist or similar dictatorships.
The manipulation of history becomes convenient for the purposes of totalitarian powers, which seek to hide or modify information to show a single version that suits their political propaganda.
The government has been efficient in making it appear that everything prior to 1998 was ill-conceived. However, there will always be educated people who will try to find out about their past.
Education is the best tool for citizens to know their own history and thus avoid being manipulated. The study of history without manipulation broadens the analysis of the country we live in today, improves the understanding of the present and helps to make decisions for the future. This is a difficult task since the subject of history usually bores young people.
The manipulation of groups and collectivities is the order of the day and not a few politicians and personalities cultivate it assiduously, relying on all the means at their disposal.
Eliminating recent history as told to us by the state is imperative, it turns out that the government leaders are savior messiahs to whom you can not take the opposite because you would be labeled as a criminal, it would be a hate crime.
We have to renew the educational curriculum and I would go back to the old history texts and I would add recent history but without manipulation or hatred, I would let the students make their own conclusions as it should be a democracy, and not in this system that I call an autocracy.
I would look for a way to make contests with prizes or using social networks such as WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook or X.
There, students should give their opinion about a topic chosen by the teacher, which would later explain in class, the most accurate, funny and close to reality answer would give more extra points in their grades.
That is what I would do to encourage young people not to forget history, but I think this could be achieved together with another very important factor: a change of government in my country.
It was a pleasure to share with the Hive Learners community.