Education, Power and the State in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela Seminar

Hugo Chávez identified three forms of power: economic, political and knowledge. The latter relates to education and is perceived as a liberating process from birth to death. Education in Venezuela emphasises not only the formal one taking place in educational institutions, but also the informal one throughout the whole society in form of mass intellectuality. The seminar will link both forms of education with the example of an alternative school in Barrio Pueblo Nuevo, Merida, where power takes the form of participatory democracy and young people emancipate themselves in preparation for a fundamental change in society.