Notes

CARACAS, Venezuela — High school student Maria Arias is so bright and chatty that her classmates call her "Wikipedia." Her parents saved up to buy her 12 brand-new notebooks, one for each subject – but nine months into the school year, the pages are mostly blank. These days she just hopes at least one of her teachers will show up for class.

"You risk your life to be here and end up waiting around for hours doing nothing," 14-year-old Maria complained. "But you have to keep coming because it's the only way out."

Venezuela suffers from a ravaged economy and soaring crime. But the country's ongoing struggles have destroyed its once up-and-coming school system, robbing poor students like Maria of a chance at a better life. The country has canceled 16 school days since December, including Friday classes, because of an energy crisis.

In truth, Venezuelan children have missed an average of 40 percent of class time, a parent group estimates. At Maria's school, so many students have fainted from hunger that parents are told to keep their children home if they have no food. And while the school locks its gate each morning, thieves, often teens themselves, still manage to break in and rob students between classes.

From The Best To The Worst

A third of the population of Venezuela is under age 15. Until recently its schools were among the best in South America. The late President Hugo Chavez made education a central part of his political revolution, and the high prices fetched by Venezuelan oil gave the country plenty of money to spend on teachers and equipment. The government even renovated Maria's 1,700-student school and installed a new cafeteria.

In just a few years, all of that progress has been undone. A fall in the price of oil and years of economic problems have brought the country to its knees, along with many of its 7 million public school students. The annual dropout rate has doubled. More than a quarter of teenagers are not enrolled in school at all, and classrooms are understaffed as professionals flee the country.

Maria's school sits between a ghetto and what was once a middle-class neighborhood in the capital, Caracas. The bathrooms lack running water. But things are even worse outside the city, where schools shut down for weeks at a time.

No More Math, No P.E., No English

Maria has a two-hour free period instead of English. Her sister isn't being taught math. Several other classes are no longer held, including gym, which was cancelled after the teacher was fatally shot.

Maria's accounting teacher recently went missing for more than a week. When she returned one afternoon, she limited herself to correcting homework. Maria used a friend's phone as a calculator to try to work through math problems while her classmates laid their heads on their desks.

Instead of coming to school, teachers spend their days waiting to receive their share of food. As many as 40 percent of teachers skip class on any given day to wait in food lines, according to a teachers group.

Maria's country is now one of the most lawless in the world. She has seen robberies, lootings and violent mobs on her way to school. The locked metal gate at the school's sole entrance makes the huge building feel like a prison. But robbers still find ways in. Even the other students can be dangerous. Maria's parents worry most about boys, as Venezuela now has the highest teen pregnancy rate in South America.

"I'm scared every day. Your heart leaps into your throat and you're like, 'Jeez, I thought a school was supposed to be safe,'" she said.

Nothing To Eat At Home Or School

School supplies are lacking: In chemistry class, students can't perform experiments because they have no materials. A pile of 30,000 unopened textbooks blocks the auditorium stage, as the teachers decided they were too full of government propaganda to use. The new cafeteria never opened because there was no food or cooking gas.

Many children have nothing to eat at home or in school. A quarter of Venezuelan children missed class this year because of hunger, according to the national research group Foundation Bengoa.

"I have one student who missed the whole year," earth sciences teacher Berli Jaspe said. "We're going to pass her anyway. It's not these kids' fault the country is falling apart."

Missing Teachers

Maria's teachers rarely see her on Thursdays, her government-assigned grocery shopping day. One recent morning, her mother asked her to leave class early because a store across town was selling flour.

By the time Maria arrived, the stock already had run out. She raced back to school to make her afternoon math exam. But when she got there, the math teacher hadn't shown up. It was his shopping day, too.

Parents say they struggle to guide teenagers through such rough situations. Maria's mother Aracelis knows her children's grades have fallen this year, though the school has not had supplies to print report cards. She said she dropped out of high school, but isn't sure if Maria -– who goes to school almost every day -– is doing much better.

"Venezuela must have done something very terrible to be punished like this," she said.