African Entrepreneurship Records 2

Chapter 1491 Cultural Invasion
Under the intimidation from East Africa and Germany, there are few countries in the world that can withstand such pressure, so the Venezuelan government can only cooperate with the arrangements of the two countries. This is definitely a very frustrating thing. After all, Venezuela is a Spanish-speaking country, and there is no other example in the world that is forced to learn German.

According to East Africa's arrangement, German will become a fixed course in Venezuela's compulsory education and secondary and higher education in the future, just like most students in the Far East Empire in the previous life had to take English classes.

This treatment is unique in the German-speaking organization. For example, there has never been a case of compulsory learning of German in non-German member states. For example, in Belgium, education is dominated by the Belgian government, so French and German are equally important. Only in the Belgian Congo colony adjacent to East Africa, due to special circumstances, German is fully promoted.

Even for a weak country like the Abyssinian Empire, East Africa did not force it to learn German. Instead, the Abyssinian Empire took the initiative to promote the development of German education in its own country.

The reason why Venezuela is treated differently is very simple. First, it is Venezuela's oil resources that East Africa cannot give up. Second, it is Venezuela's strategic value. Venezuela is located on the northern coast of South America. It is the dividing line between the East African and US spheres of influence and the front line of confrontation between the two countries.

East Africa has three naval bases in Venezuela, one air force base, two army bases, and one naval base in Colombia. These are the only seven large military bases in the North Atlantic region of East Africa. This allows the jurisdiction of the East African Atlantic Fleet to break through the South Atlantic, enter the North Atlantic, and penetrate into the Caribbean Sea.

In short, Venezuela is an important strategic fulcrum for East Africa to ensure its interests in South America, the Caribbean, and the North Atlantic. It is precisely because of its firm foothold in Venezuela that East Africa can gain an advantage in the process of competing with the United States for hegemony in South America.

Therefore, in order to make Venezuela completely turn to East Africa, the East African government has infiltrated Venezuela in all aspects, including economy, military, culture, etc.

……

With Venezuela joining the Organization of German-speaking Countries, the work of the Venezuelan Ministry of Education has become busy.

Caracas.

103 Bolivar Avenue, Venezuelan Ministry of Education office building.

Education Minister Moleman is organizing personnel to compile a new national compulsory education curriculum.

Moellerman announced to his subordinates: "Starting this year, all compulsory education schools, institutions directly under the Ministry of Education, and private schools that enjoy government subsidies must fully promote German courses in order to accelerate the integration with the international community and learn advanced knowledge and culture."

"All primary and secondary schools under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education or subsidized by the Ministry of Education will have at least five German classes per week, which will become compulsory for all students. At the same time, a new course of world geography and history will be offered, with one class per week."

"Our Ministry of Education will lead the compilation of this world geography and history course, including introducing the industrial development of developed industrial countries such as East Africa and Germany, as well as social humanities, so as to broaden students' horizons and improve Venezuela's per capita education level and knowledge literacy."

The Ministry of Education of Venezuela can be said to be one of the youngest official government departments in Venezuela. Prior to this, education in Venezuela was basically controlled by the Catholic Church and only served the elite.

Although the Venezuelan government promulgated the Public Education Law in the 1970s in an attempt to implement compulsory education, unfortunately, it was not realized due to financial and other issues, and religious schools still dominate.

In the past, Venezuela did not establish the Ministry of Education and promote the construction of compulsory education schools until 1928 due to the prosperity of the oil economy.

In other words, in the past, it was not until 1928 that Venezuela had a Ministry of Education and the government began to intervene in the country's education industry.

In this time and space, under the influence of East Africa, the Ministry of Education of Venezuela was established in 1914, and this government department can be said to be basically controlled by East Africa. For example, the current Minister of Education, Moleman, was appointed by the East African government to become the second Minister of Education of Venezuela. He is even an East African, not a Venezuelan.

Most members of the Venezuelan Ministry of Education can speak fluent German. Of course, due to the needs of their work, even the white gloves of the Venezuelan Ministry of Education in East Africa can speak Spanish.

Otherwise, there is no foundation for promoting German in Venezuela, a Spanish-speaking country. Only when teachers and staff learn Spanish first can they teach Venezuelan students who only speak Spanish to learn German.

Fortunately, East Africa does not lack Spanish-speaking talents. Therefore, East Africa has the ability to place its own people in the Venezuelan Ministry of Education and send its own people to serve as German teachers in schools.

In East Africa's local foreign language courses, Spanish, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Arabic are all at the same level. Students can choose to study them at the university level. The actual situation is that only Chinese, English, French and Spanish are popular in East Africa.

Spanish is a new and popular foreign language in East Africa. This is mainly due to the development of trade and frequent exchanges between East Africa, Spain and Latin America in recent years. The demand for Spanish-speaking talents has increased, employment opportunities have increased, and naturally the audience has increased. In college, Moleman's major foreign language was Spanish.

In 1920, Moleman became a staff member of the East African Embassy in Venezuela. In 1925, he was transferred to the Venezuelan Ministry of Education. Now he has become one of the top government officials in Venezuela.

From this point, we can see how serious the infiltration of East Africa into Venezuela is. The Ministry of Education is almost completely controlled by East Africa. This is also one of the main reasons for the rapid growth of the German-speaking population in Venezuela in recent years.

In addition, Venezuela itself has a large German-speaking population. At the primary school level, it is entirely possible to find German teachers with teaching ability. There is no need to worry about the promotion of German in Venezuela being delayed due to a lack of German teachers.

At least now, in the schools under the jurisdiction of the Venezuelan Ministry of Education, there are plenty of German teachers. Elementary school German teachers can be local Germans in Venezuela, while corresponding talents can also be found in East Africa for middle schools and universities.

In addition, there are very few middle schools and universities in Venezuela, so the demand for German teachers is not very high.

Under the management of the Venezuelan Ministry of Education, a German education system has been established, led by East Africa, and accounts for more than 80% of all students in Venezuela. The future of Venezuela is therefore in the hands of East Africa.

Of course, East Africa can easily control Venezuelan education, which is related to the Venezuelan government's own lack of attention to education. The upper class in Venezuela does not care about the education of the lower class, but only cares about the education of their own children, and for this, they can choose church schools or study abroad.

The education of the lower classes was basically in a vacuum, and this situation lasted until before World War I, when the East African government took the initiative to take over Venezuela's civilian education in order to strengthen its control over and cultural penetration of Venezuela.

A large number of German schools were established with funding from East Africa and popularized throughout Venezuela. As for educational funding, it was drawn from the income from East Africa's investment in Venezuela's oil and other industries. Of course, a large part of this should have been a source of tax revenue for the Venezuelan government.

Former Venezuelan President Gomez tried to take back this government revenue and proposed that the Venezuelan government take over the national education system, but the East African government rejected it.

The East African government is sure that if these education funds fall into the hands of the Venezuelan government, they will basically go into the pockets of Venezuelan officials. Of course, this is not the most important thing. The most important thing is that if Venezuela takes back the education system, the process of East Africa's cultural invasion of Venezuela will be interrupted.

This has also been proven in the past. In the early 20th century, with the prosperity of Venezuela's oil industry, although the Gomez government implemented compulsory education, it invested more of the oil revenue in military expenditures or in buying personnel.

The Gomez government implemented compulsory education not out of kindness, but to establish its own voice. Because he is a dictator, he has many opponents in Venezuela, especially schools controlled by the Catholic Church, which have become a base of public opinion against the Gomez government.

So, Gomez tried to crack down on the church and the so-called democrats by making education compulsory.

East Africa does not trust Gomez or the Venezuelan government. Therefore, the Ministry of Education has become almost the most independent department in the Venezuelan government, and even the Minister of Education is appointed by the East African government.

East Africa's investment in education in Venezuela has also reaped great rewards. In addition to the Lake Maracaibo area which has basically become a German-speaking area, the development of German in eastern Venezuela has also been extremely rapid. Thanks to this, a large number of lower-class people and Indians have also been able to have the right to education.

When these people grow up, most of them will stand firmly on the side of East Africa in the future. Although the Venezuelan elite still adhere to Spanish education, compared with the large number of lower-class people, it is obviously the latter who can determine the future cultural and linguistic direction of a country.

Don’t blame East Africa for doing this. After all, it is the Venezuelan government and the upper class elites who do not pay attention to, and even ignore, the education problems of the grassroots people.

"At the same time, in all public education systems, a national unified promotion exam will be established, such as the primary school entrance exam and the college entrance exam, especially the college entrance exam, and German will become an important criterion," Moellermann said.

Previously, there was no college entrance examination in Venezuela. Now, universities in Venezuela basically recruit students independently. Not to mention the college entrance examination, even middle school admissions are not conducted through a unified examination. Instead, the church and private middle schools select students based on their background, money, independent examinations, etc.

Before East Africa invested in Venezuela's education, the educated population in Venezuela was less than 10%, which was basically a privilege of the elite class. Therefore, financial resources and social status were important reference standards for Venezuelan schools.

Now, East Africa has built an education system in addition to Venezuela's traditional education, covering primary schools, middle schools and universities. Of course, the number of the latter two in Venezuela is not large at present.

The most typical example is universities. Currently, there is only one institution of higher learning, the University of Maracaibo, which is directly managed by the Ministry of Education. This university was obviously funded and built by East Africa, and its original purpose was to solve the education problems of the children of East African employees.

There are many East African workers in Lake Malacaibo. Therefore, in order to solve the education problems of these workers' children, many primary schools, middle schools and the University of Malacaibo were built. This also made Maracaibo the most educationally developed area in Venezuela.

Of course, although there is only one university under the Ministry of Education of Venezuela, the University of Maracaibo, it is one of the only two universities in Venezuela.

Because before this, Venezuela only had one university, which was the Central University of Venezuela located in the capital Caracas, and there were only a few hundred students on campus. This means that the number of college graduates in Venezuela each year was only about a hundred.

At the same time, although East Africa has only built one university in Venezuela, as long as the college entrance examination scores are good enough, you can apply to study in East Africa later. After all, East Africa is very welcoming to talented people with real talents.

It can be said that the East African government has single-handedly pushed the entire Venezuelan education forward by two or three decades. However, the outstanding students trained under this education system will most likely not stay in their own country to develop in the future, just like the Indian students in their previous lives.

Venezuela's education industry is now basically controlled by East Africa. Of course, the East African government has not wiped out Venezuela's church schools and private schools. After all, these are the basic foundation of Venezuela's elite education. Suppressing these schools is not conducive to East Africa's control over Venezuela.

However, with the development of popular education in Venezuela in the future, traditional Venezuelan education will inevitably be swept into the dustbin of history.

East Africa's investment in and control over Venezuela's education is one of the most typical representatives of cultural invasion of Venezuela. In addition, East Africa's infiltration into Venezuela in other areas is also very significant.

For example, news newspapers, radio, movies, literature and so on are basically controlled by East African capital. In addition, East African products are very popular in Venezuela, East African standards have become mainstream in all walks of life in Venezuela, and the German language has been promoted, etc.

Venezuela is rapidly becoming "East Africanized" or "Germanized". In the future, even if Venezuela breaks free from the control of East Africa, this deep-seated cultural and ideological influence will continue for a long time.

It’s not that there are people in Venezuela who fail to see the “harm” of East Africa’s combined punch, but because of East Africa’s strict economic and military control over Venezuela, they cannot change the current trend in Venezuela’s cultural field.

To achieve this, we must first drive out the East African troops in Venezuela, but in the entire South American region, there are almost no countries with this capability. Only Brazil and Argentina can barely resist the cultural invasion of East Africa in South America, but it is also very limited. Even in major South American countries such as Brazil and Argentina, their young people are increasingly chasing after the cultural trends of Europe, America and East Africa.

(End of this chapter)