CARACAS -- The bitter confrontation at the heart of Venezuelan politics intensified Friday after the approval of a controversial education law that critics say opens the way to the indoctrination of young people.

Opposition legislators walked out of parliament in protest Thursday evening at what they claimed were procedural and constitutional violations by the government majority. In the streets outside, opposition protesters were gassed and beaten, and a dozen journalists suffered injuries from government supporters armed with sticks and rocks.

The bill appears to open up education to political interference by the government. Among other provisions, it enshrines ``Bolivarian doctrine'' as the basis of education and gives a major role in education to the so-called ``communal councils,'' which are community assemblies mostly dominated by the ruling Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela.

``This law is very dangerous,' said legislator Pastora Medina of the Humanist Front, a one-time government supporter and a member of the education commission. ``It turns schools into centers for community activists and ignores the pedagogical aspect.''

Medina complains that, along with other legislators, she only received the text of the law a week ago, and that the measure was pushed through parliament without debate.

Members of the ruling Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela deny the charge. They say opposition critics, who include the country's Catholic bishops, are merely defending an outdated system that helps the rich.

``The Church is defending its privileges,'' Deputy Speaker Saúl Ortega asserted during the debate. Church leaders have said the law abolishes the right to religious education and threatens the existence of some 700 church-run schools that receive a state subsidy.

Government supporters argue that traditionally excluded sectors of the population will be guaranteed an education under the new law. Among its provisions is the permanence of so-called educational ``missions'' -- state-run remedial campaigns originally designed as a one-off solution to the problem of exclusion.

But opposition to the law extends far beyond the Catholic church. Students, parent and teacher organizations, and the country's main universities are up in arms. University rectors headed a protest march Thursday that was prevented by riot police from reaching parliament, even as government supporters, bused in from across the country, were allowed through.

Nicolás Bianco, acting rector of the central university, known as the UCV, said the police fired tear gas and plastic pellets with no provocation, and no warning, to disperse the march.

``I felt I was about to die,'' Bianco, who suffers from a respiratory condition and was unable to breathe after the gas attack, told a radio interviewer.

University authorities issued a joint statement threatening not to implement the law, which undermines the long-established principle of university autonomy.

``This is an illegitimate and unconstitutional law,'' Bianco said Friday.

The universities also object to losing control of admissions policy, which will be determined by the government.

Those who argue that the law heralds the ``Cubanization'' of Venezuelan education received backing from an unexpected source. The head of the parliamentary sub-commission on education, Aleydys Manaure, told the plenary session she was proud not only to have produced the law, ``but that we have done so on 13 August, Fidel Castro's birthday.''

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