[T]hugo Chavez's Latest Gambit

He's not only slouching towards socialism, but towards a dictatorship. After nationalizing the oil industry, instituting price controls on food (causing food shortages and inflation), and shutting down opposition media broadcasts, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is now threatening to nationalize any educational institution that does not adopt his socialist government’s new curriculum.

“All of the schools in the nation must apply this curriculum,” Mr. Chávez said this week during his regular call-in show, Hello, President. “Any school which does not comply — to be nationalized! Any university which does not comply — to be nationalized!”

Mr. Chávez also said that if the director of any “educational center … is very stubborn and resists — he goes to jail, and that’s it! That’s the law.”

Mr. Chávez has said that the nation’s educational system should promote socialist, anticapitalist values and that a new curriculum would replace “colonial, Eurocentric ideological education.” That curriculum was supposed to be instituted in elementary and secondary schools last month, but its details have not yet been released.

The public-university system is one of the last government institutions still dominated by opponents of Mr. Chávez.

Chavez is doing all he can to destroy the ability of Venezuelans to earn a living, build an economy, and to provide for themselves. He's creating conditions for another socialist failure, although he's going to claim that this time he's going to succeed in building a socialist paradise (all socialist dictators make those claims before failing spectacularly).

Chavez is not only socialist, but anti-intellectual and his decrees will have a destructive and corrosive effect on the Venezuelan people. They will become ever more reliant on the government to provide for basic services and questioning authority will go out the window because of the consequences - imprisonment if you disagree with the government.