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International Education News
Visit to Venezuela
This article first appeared in New Horizons' Newsletter, Vol. III . No. 3, February, 1983.
Caracas is a bustling metropolis teeming with industrious, energetic people and bumper-to-bumper traffic on the freeways. Downtown are two new luxury Hiltons, modern steel and glass skyscrapers, and innumerable buildings under construction; while many of the hillsides surrounding the city are covered with cave-dwellings and slums.
This is the setting for Venezuela's bold experiment in raising the level of intelligence of its 14 million citizens. Dr. Luis Machado, visionary Minister for the Development of Human Intelligence, proclaims, "This century will be known as the one that produced the intelligence explosion. This is the biggest revolution in history!"
Dr. Machado began developing his theories on the malleability of intelligence when he was Chief of Staff for former President Caldera ten years ago. "I traveled the world seeking methods of improving my own mental abilities," he explains. "I thought if such methods could help me, why should they not be used to help all of humanity. I believe everyone has the right to be intelligent, that intelligence can be taught, and that every government has a duty to make the opportunities to develop intelligence available to all its citizens . "
Since his appointment three years ago by President Luis Herrera Campins, Dr. Machado is beginning to see the fruits of his endeavors. He says, "I hold a flag for anyone to take. Any country is welcome to the information and programs we have developed and piloted." Dr. Machado points out that educational leaders of many countries have already come to observe, learn, and take the methods back to their people, including the Soviet Union, and the People's Republic of China. The Minister of Education of Cuba and his staff visited just last month, and will soon be implementing new educational programs there.
According to Dr. Machado, Dr. Bell, US Secretary of Education, told him during his visit to Washington a few months ago, "What strikes me the most of all about what you are telling me is how simple and straightforward the decision of your country is. It is such an elementary one, such an obvious one."
This decision to raise the level of intelligence of an entire population from birth to old age may be simple, but the implementation would be staggeringly complex unless it were done through existing structures and organizations. This is precisely how it is being done in Venezuela. Hospitals, schools, television, radio, newspapers, and organizations such as unions, civil service and the army are all involved. All projects are being carried out through the Ministry of Education, with the backing of the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, the Child Foundation and other private or State institutions and industries.
The recent Workers' Collective Contract, signed by the Venezuelan Aluminum Industry, included a clause which reads, "The Company promises to offer its workers, through its own means or in cooperation with other competent official agencies, Development of Intelligence courses, in which systematic use of thinking tools and the awareness of the rights of citizens are improved upon along with a follow-up process that allows for the assessment and activation of the changes obtained . . . ." Although the program offers opportunities to systematically improve thinking skills of the entire population at every age, special emphasis is placed on the importance of laying foundations for developing intelligence at birth. I had an opportunity to visit the largest maternity hospital in Venezuela, the Concepçion Palacios, which serves a large lower socioeconomic population. Over a hundred babies are born there every day. Only sick babies are in the nursery: the others are with their mothers in brightly muralled rooms painted by Venezuelan artists. Vision is stimulated from the very beginning, as are all the other senses.
Dr. Beatriz Manriquez, Director of the Family Program, has with her staff developed 10 video programs to teach the often illiterate mothers how to develop the potential of their babies through loving care, sensori-motor stimulation, physical exercises, an d proper nutrition. The information is largely based on the work of Drs. Berry Brazelton and Burton White, USA She has recruited and trained over 1000 volunteers to help educate the mothers during their three-day stay. During that time, mothers not only l earn stimulating methods to use at home, but how to sense the babies' needs and interpret their cries, how to create educational toys from household odds and ends, and how to involve the whole family in helping the new baby to develop in every way. This is a radical departure from the recent past in which babies were swaddled and kept in dark corners to keep them quiet.
The most important part of the learning process involves instilling in the mother a great pride and confidence in the potential of her child. It is no wonder that child abuse is plummeting in Venezuela.
After the hospital stay, parents return to special centers with their babies periodically for the first three years to learn appropriate methods to stimulate the child's intelligence at every age. Further information and support is provided by four television channels, each of which broadcast twenty five-minute spots each day as a public service.
Administrators, teachers and the families they work with speak enthusiastically about the differences they have observed in children who have come through the program in the last three years. Dr. Manriquez describes them as unusually alert, curious, eager to learn, and especially happy children.
As we reported in our September Newsletter, the education project continues from preschool through University and into adult learning programs. The Visual Education project, based on the work of French artist Jacob Agam, begins at age three. Preschool children are taught to identify, memorize, and duplicate basic forms in a "visual alphabet" composed of geometrical shapes, lines, and primary colors. According to Agam and the Venezuelan educators who developed the pilot project with him, this early visual education will lay the groundwork for the first learning experiences including reading. Other objectives are laying the basis for the development of intelligence through the training of visual acuity, coordination of visual and thinking processes, and creative expression.
Like the Family Project, the Intelligence Project under the direction of Dr. Margarita Sanchez, has been implemented through existing schools and institutions and has been developed through a pyramid training system of teachers. For example, in developing the Learning to Think program, based on Edward de Bono's work in England, five psychologists instructed 150 selected teachers, who in turn trained 42,000 teachers, who are now teaching the creative thinking and problem solving processes to 1, 200, 000 children.
Further additions to school programs have been created around the work of Reuven Feuerstein (Israel), whose Instrumental Enrichment methods are being used with children with learning disabilities. Creative programs utilize processes developed by Jacob Agam, Calvin Taylor (University of Utah) and Suzuki (Japan), Harvard's Intelligence Project, designed specifically for Venezuela, focuses on developing reasoning foundations, formal reasoning skills, inventive thinking,language comprehension, problem solving and decision making. The Chess project is aimed not only at all seven year olds, but adults as well are learning to play chess and to apply the thinking strategies to solving problems in everyday life. Also for the adult population, 20 half-hour television programs have been developed to offer "The Tools of Thinking."
All the programs, some of which are still in the pilot stage, are being carefully evaluated and statistics are being compiled. Bolt, Baranek & Newman, an engineering firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is doing the implementation and statistical evaluation of the Harvard Intelligence Project.
Dr. Friedhart Klix, President of the World Union of Psychology and Professor at the University of Berlin, recently stated, "The Development of Human Intelligence Project in Venezuela represents a scientific experience that is unique in the world. We will dedicate the necessary time to the distribution of these ideas in the 50 countries that belong to our international association."
President Luis Herrera Campins, entitled last fall's symposium which drew leaders from around the world, "Intelligence for Peace." In his opening address he noted that "The history of humanity is filled with conflicts, provoked by frustrations and injustices, by the refusal of man to be allowed access to the development of all his creative potential. The experiment with which we are laying solid foundations for this slippery and aloof peace that man seeks after with hope and at times desperation, is the same one that we are advancing and that we would like to share with all the nations of the world."
Copyright © 1997 New Horizons for Learning.
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