What’s at stake in the Venezuelan elections (Progreso Weekly)

[naaman fletcher]

18. Wiped out illiteracy? lol. You will believe anything

http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/16/finding-george-orwell-in-venezuela/

MONTREAL — In 2005, Venezuela became an official Territory Free of Illiteracy. A massively funded government literacy drive achieved, in just over a year, what decades of neoliberal neglect had failed to deliver: a country where every single person knows how to read.

It’s the kind of story of radical inclusiveness and progressive zeal that has earned the government of Hugo Chávez wide admiration — even from those who might blanch at its heavy-handed approach to civil liberties. There’s just one problem: the government’s claim is verifiably false.

Preliminary results from the 2011 census published by the government’s own National Statistics Institute show that, as of last year, 95.1 percent of Venezuelans can read and write, just 1.5 percentage point higher than a decade earlier. The findings confirm what critics have claimed all along: that the government’s 2005 drive had little effect on the nation’s literacy rate, which has continued to creep up in line with long-term trends, as older people who never had formal education pass away and are replaced by better-schooled generations.