State-led Education for Democratic Socialism: Venezuela's Education Missions

Venezuela’s ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ is conceptualised as an anti-neoliberal project that aims to promote fundamental changes in the configuration of political power via processes of state-grassroots collaboration. Central to this process is an emphasis on the key role of education in the development of a 21st Century socialism based on principles of protagonist participation and democratic socialism. While many education policies claim to encourage the participation of citizens and the idea of the ‘democratic person’, and have used the language of liberation, empowerment and justice, very few state-led initiatives have shown a clear commitment to creating spaces and opportunities whereby people can develop critical consciousness and become active agents in the restructuring of state-society relations. While many see developing critical literacy in a state-based education system as an oxymoron, the current process of state-promoted social change in Venezuela offers a rare opportunity to examine how state-sponsored education to promote protagonist, participatory democracy might develop in practice. This article therefore uses the Venezuelan case to examine the extent to which discourse has been put into practice, thereby shedding light on the possibility of state-grassroots collaboration to promote education for critical consciousness and structural change.