Two photos

Last week I changed my profile picture on Twitter and Instagram. I put one from when I first went to Montalbán, in Carabobo. I removed another from when I presented the results of the investigation on the educational reality of Caracas Petare, on May 2. Almost seven months and 235 kilometers between one and the other.

A small city on a high valley, in the mountains of the coastal range where the Jiraharas Indians lived and where Sevillians and Canaries settled in the VXI century. Its population is estimated at around 26,000 inhabitants, diminished by an exodus that the Montalbaneros themselves call Biblical.

The other, from being a rural town to the east of Caracas a century ago, with cocoa farms, crystalline rivers and one of the capital's favorite country walks, is today a chaotic neighborhood where around half a million people survive. people in extreme poverty. It is described as the most populous and violent neighborhood in Latin America.

By car they join after 3 hours of highways, roads and secondary roads. Montalbán follows a way of life attached to the countryside. Petare, on the other hand, is a hive of people, hectic, an arm to the east of an overwhelming city.

They move at different speeds. But both populations suffer, equally, the economic destruction created by Bolivarian socialism. Hunger, suffering, desolation, poverty in its inhabitants, injustice, constant humiliation, non-existent or lousy public services. In that the resemblance is maddening.

From Montalbán and Petare I have two recent, clear photographs of how children and young people between the ages of 6 and 16 are being educated.

In the course of just over a year at the head of the Un Estado de Derecho (UeD) research team and with the mentoring of the emeritus professor of the Simón Bolívar University (USB), Klaus Jaffe, we have presented the results of two empirical, scientific field studies on the human right to education.

Educational facilities are in ruins, afflicted by teaching failures. And it is almost better that it be like this: as in the whole country, what they would teach, if they worked, would be the same malforming official content, an indoctrination manual. A string of ideas organized to form an uncritical, manipulable mass. The opposite of useful content for self-improvement, productivity, and the personal fulfillment of children and young people.

Finally, they suffer from the problems of the entire national, centralized, monopolistic educational system. The bankruptcy of the Venezuelan education model is in sight and has been documented in detail. There is no quality educational process in any corner of the country, just a simulation, a farce, more like a scam.

But we have found, because we searched, another similarity. One that gives me hope and strength. One that has all the potential to grow. An alternative is emerging that will appeal to good people in this country, that will unite us against oppression and backwardness.

Both in Petare and Montalbán, people have sought alternatives and generated solutions among themselves so that children and young people can learn. In both communities, even in such a state of abandonment and poverty, we document that a group of families and educators have stopped waiting for the government to fulfill its "obligation" and, decidedly, have sought to educate themselves by their own means and through free agreements.< /p>

In the same way that has happened in other very poor countries in the world, where the deficiencies of education in the hands of governments are obvious, in these two areas of Venezuela people have begun to educate themselves. A spontaneous private, alternative, accessible, very low cost, and better quality educational order has sprung up.

There are some visible patterns in the education that Petareñas and Montalbaneras families are seeking. We are facing a virtuous phenomenon, a process that, although it is in its early stages, with the work of all the decent people of this country, we can strengthen it. I have evidence that it is happening in other cities of the country. And I have the illusion that it can be extended even more.

I am not one of those who expects others to do the work for me, much less of those who still trust politicians, messiahs and saviors. That's why I've started now, accompanied by an ever-growing group of valued and determined people.

I invite you to learn about the research on the educational reality in Petare and Montalbán de Carabobo. I also encourage you to follow the actions of educational social synergy initiated by this network of dreaming friends that is A State of Law (UeD).

Don't we all agree that the education of children and young people defines the future of a country? Can we Venezuelans, with new ideas, guided by this model that is emerging spontaneously, from the bottom up, transform the current tragic educational reality? Will it be possible to change, in a short time, also, those photos?

Antonio Canova González