Venezuela: The Reading Revolution

"I did not even know what a letter of the alphabet was. Now I can defend myself." So said Felicinda de Lozada, a 36-year-old Caracas housewife for whom a proud new world was opening up last week. Illiterate a year ago, Felicinda enrolled in one of the adult night schools that Venezuela's government has organized in her slum barrio. She now looks forward to a complete primary-school education, and then intends to get a job to help support her family.

Throughout Venezuela, young and old are learning to read, write and do simple mathematics as the result of an intensive education drive by President Romulo Betancourt. When Betancourt took office almost four years ago, Venezuela was emerging from a decade of do-nothing military dictatorship; of the country's 6,500,000 people, 56% were illiterate.

The government has allocated an average $150 million annually for education. The money bought 3.725 new schoolhouses in dingy city slums and dusty villages, enough for 97% of Venezuela's school-age population. The teacher shortage is acute, and too many children drop out early to go to work. But since 1959, the number of primary students has nearly doubled, from 700,000 to 1,200,000.

Adults, who had been condemned to blankness in their lives, now find themselves subjected to a corps of volunteers ready to teach them the rudiments of reading and writing. In the countryside, children pass on their learning to oldsters; in the cities, high school students go into the barrios, and next month 2,000 soldiers armed with textbooks will join the campaign in the slums. Venezuela's illiteracy has been cut in half. It is now at 26%, and next year, the Betancourt government promises, it will drop to 10%.