By Mario Gutierrez Vega
A former government official Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela leads the redesign and content of the textbooks and teaching materials of the Secretary of Public Education (SEP).
Both Arturo Loaiza Escalonaa graduate of the Venezuelan Libertador Experimental Pedagogical University, holds a position as deputy director at the SEP since January of last year, according to his net worth statement delivered to the Public Function Secretary (SFP).
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Loaiza Escalona is held in public acts as Director of Development and Innovation of Educational Materials, which in the organizational chart of the SEP is only one rung below the General Directorate of Educational Materials that heads Marx Arriaga Navarro.
In his statement of assets, he establishes that he was director of the National Library of Venezuela from November 24, 2014 to September 1, 2018. The library is attached to the Ministry of Popular Power for Culture, one of the central portfolios for the dissemination of Chavista ideals and government propaganda headed by Nicolas Maduro.
Loaiza Escalona received the appointment of Maduro through resolution 021, issued on November 19, 2014, as stated in the Official Gazette of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, published on November 25 of that year.
In the document delivered to the Public Function, Loaiza Escalona he concealed that he had previously been general director of special projects of the Ministry of Popular Power for Communes and Social Movements of the government of Venezuela. His appointment was made official on December 9, 2013 in the Official Gazette of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
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As deputy director at the SEP He has a net monthly salary of 27,800 pesos and, according to his asset statement, it is his first foray as a civil servant in the government of mexico.
Loaiza Escalona arrived at the SEP at the invitation of his friend Marx Arriaga Navarrogeneral director of Educational Materials of the unit, with whom he redesigns the free primary and secondary textbooks.
Both officials even write texts in editions of the General Directorate of Educational Materials, as in “A book without recipes, for the teacher and the teacher. Phase 3”, work recently published in the first days of January.
Arriaga navarro considers that the current public education system it promotes the “neoliberal” model, which is why it requires fundamental changes in its structure and in the materials that are given to primary and secondary students.
For example, it points out that they should be removed from the free text books words and concepts such as “efficiency”, “competitiveness”, “productivity” and “knowledge society”.
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On various occasions, Arriaga Navarro has explained that he intends to include in the books of free text a discourse that confronts colonialism and “western, white and masculine gazes”. And he maintains that public education teachers ask to create a “decolonial, libertarian and humanist” model.
In 2021, the project that sought to redesign 18 failed textbooks in two months. The General Directorate of Educational Materials could only present the third and fourth grade Spanish books up to five months later.
As an official, he has had controversial statements. In a conference held in 2021, he pointed out that “the capitalist consumption system” seeks to classify reading as a childish action and that “the market will insist that reading is fun because it wants to develop the need for consumption in you.”
On another occasion, accompanied by Beatriz Gutiérrez MüllerPresident’s wife Andres Manuel Lopez Obradoroffered a speech in which she “recommended” women to go to public libraries to emancipate themselves and change the macho system that surrounds them.
