Sunday 17 May 2009

PISA for Venezuela, education for Venezuela


On 18 and 19 May, Mr Andreas Schleicher, head of the OECD Indicators and Analysis Division, will talk at the Universidad Central de Venezuela about the PISA programme. He is the creator and director of that programme. PISA has helped to improve education policies around the world. You can read something about it in The Economist here and there are many other articles about it in German, Dutch, Russian and Spanish out there.

I hope Venezuelans will finally dare to introduce transparency to education in Venezuela. I hope with all my heart the PISA programme sets foot in Venezuela and the Chavez government abstains from wrecking it, from interfering, from manipulating or preventing others from contributing.

The only countries in South America that still are not taking part in this programme are Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela.

I had already written about this programme here and here

Please, help us distribute this idea in Venezuela. I wrote about it in Spanish here.

5 comments:

  1. You are an optimist !
    Not that it would not be the right thing to do ...... but I never believed that Chavez is interested to educate the masses in general knowledge ......
    In Estado Trujillo not even 3 years after Chavez came into power, quite a number of schools in the villages were closed ... and used by Cubans for whatever reason , nobody could tell me what they were doing !

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  2. Bridge, I don't think Chavez wants to do that, he definitely thrives on ignorance
    and brainwashing. He and his people hate transparency (but not only they, a lot of people from the ninis and the "oppo" unfortunately are like that).

    You can see the Chavez mindset here:
    http://www.eluniversal.com/2009/02/23/pol_art_cuba-nos-esta-aseso_1276227.shtml

    I am challenging Chavistas to let us join the PISA programme. If they don't apply for Venezuela entering the programme, we, the opposition, will take action anyway. I will do further into that in another post.

    I believe the government will either try to ignore us or pretend it will let Venezuela join and then it will try to manipulate results as Cuba manipulates UNESCO results or worse. We need to be prepared for that and demand a real open participation in PISA.

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  3. Also notice I wrote "I hope Venezuelans dare" and "the Chavez government abstains from wrecking it"
    Ich bin sicher: wir machen mit, trotz Chavezregierung, so oder so.

    Kepler

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  4. It would be a real asset to have PISA help Venezuela out of the educational slump we have been enduring for decades....probably the reason of our own political demise in the past decade.

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  5. Certainly, Timbo.
    The first seminar took place yesterday and today. Now all Venezuelans who know about the idea need to keep it rolling and moving.

    The government will try to oppose it or hijack it and try to transform it into a farce (which would be very difficult, though).

    We can help to produce projects like this and above all demand transparency.
    It is a hard thing in these times of Chavismo, but as you said, it was to a large extent the low level of education that brought us here and has kept us here.

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