Iván García, Desde La Habana, 10 October 2024 — As always on the island, the official story is far removed from reality. A secondary school methodologist in a Havana municipality says that in meetings with senior officials from the Ministry of Education, political slogans predominated in an attempt to camouflage the disaster in the planning of the 2024-2025 school year.
“Whatever our level of seniority, we Cuban civil servants are manipulated by the communist party, which tells us what has to be done. It’s all a stage and we are the actors. At first you try to rebel. But then you see that you can’t change anything. You have two options: either you bend to the system or the system devours you. I chose to bend. Colouring reality, telling lies and looking for ways to make a profit from my position. I give informal help sessions, and charge 400 pesos for each class. It’s unethical, but most teachers do it.”
In the opinion of the methodologist, Education Minister Naima Trujillo Barreto, “is an official with dyed blonde hair who, when the directors complain, appeals to revolutionary principles, to creativity and sticking her ear to the ground, the same discourse as Díaz-Canel and his entourage. She, like her comrades in the party, must be told what they want to hear. At that meeting, problems were downplayed. Statistics on the teacher shortage, the number of schools repaired and the narrative that the so-called Third Improvement of the Education System is going well was sold to the public.”
On Tuesday 27 August, the minister and her court attended the Round Table, a doctrinaire programme of political fiction that distorts the harsh reality faced by Cubans. In front of the television cameras, Trujillo Barreto pointed out that a tour of the country had identified many problems that would be dealt with over the next few days, but “there is a lot of commitment and deep interpretation of all the issues worked on in the national seminars. Many people are working hard in the territories and are committed to ensuring that the course is as successful as we can make it,” said the minister to the flattering smile of Randy Alonso, a submissive state journalist.
Among the priorities for the new school year, according to the regime’s aides-de-camp, is a programme of “cultural decolonisation, learning history (Castro’s version) as well as the development of language skills, innovation and digital culture”. Dennis, a computer teacher, smiles when asked about education in the country. “For some time now, government institutions have been competing to see who can tell the biggest lie. You can’t talk about innovation and digital culture when schools in Cuba don’t have access to the internet, except for universities, and its use is rationed, and computer classes are suspended because the equipment is from the year dot and most of it is broken or doesn’t work”.
A pre-university teacher explains what the ‘cultural decolonisation and history learning’ programme is all about. “We were given a seminar as part of the course. The authorities consider that there is a regression in the teaching of history to children and young people. They claim that the use of social media, watching US serials and films, promotes a ‘hegemonic cultural discourse that distorts revolutionary values’. Imagine standing up in a classroom and talking such nonsense that nobody believes, when most students have plans or dreams of emigrating. They don’t see that it’s ridiculous.”
A primary school teacher comments that the education directors in his municipality, “proposed to us that among the activities to encourage love for the revolution and its leaders, we should organise visits to the local museum and the Fidel Castro Centre, which is located in Vedado. These people live in Narnia. They don’t know that the municipal museum has been closed for two years. And how am I going to get dozens of children to Vedado with no transport in the capital? Unless the Ministry of Education provides buses to take us there and back. These are things they say to make themselves look good to the government, but they know that they can’t be done in current conditions in the country.”
An education official notes that “the official version of the new school year is totally out of touch with reality. In the municipality where I work, only ten percent of the schools have been repaired. Almost all of them have closed toilets, almost none of them have water, and a large part of the school furniture is in a bad state. A very serious problem is the lack of teachers. According to the Ministry of Education, there is a shortage of 24,000 teachers on the island. It is probably many more than that. Half of the teachers do not have teaching qualifications. Some are professionals who are hired to teach at the primary, secondary and pre-university levels.”
“Others are ‘instant teachers,’ as they are called, because they are pulled out of their training in the second or third year of their degree. There are cases of teachers who finish a class shift in one school and have to walk a kilometre to another school to teach because there is no teacher for a certain subject. Due to the shortage, recruitment rules have been relaxed. I have had to rehire people who for various reasons have been expelled from education. In addition to this disaster, school supplies are not complete. We have not received the new books. They say they will arrive before the end of the year. They said the same thing last year and they never arrived,” says the official.
When you talk to relatives of pupils at all levels of education, the list of complaints is long. Reinier, the father of two primary school children, says that this year, his children are due a new uniform, “but they haven’t arrived at the shop. I have had to spend 5,000 pesos on four shirts and 10,000 pesos on four pairs of trousers, 15,000 pesos in total. And my salary as an accountant in a company is 6,400,000 pesos. Thanks to my brother who lives in Miami I was able to buy the uniforms. He also sent me tennis shoes, backpacks and school supplies. I can’t complain.”
But many parents in Cuba do not have relatives abroad. This is the case with Sonia, who admits to being extremely stressed. “My daughter is a pre-university student, I have no relatives in the US and I had to scrape together the money to buy her a mobile phone, a bag and a decent pair of trainers, because the boys made fun of her shoes in school and she had a complex. Not to mention that I have to give her money to buy something to eat when she gets out of school. And I have to pay 200 or 300 pesos for a tutor, because some teachers aren’t very good. Then the school has the nerve to ask parents for ‘help’, whether it’s detergent to clean the classrooms or let’s raise money and buy a fan so the kids don’t get so hot.”
But the issue that parents are most unhappy about is the regime’s intention to have students work for a fortnight in agriculture or fixing tiles and monuments. Diario Las Américas asked eleven families if they would allow their children to do it. All eleven answered No.
“It’s no longer enough for them to indoctrinate in schools, talking about Fidel and telling their version of history. Now they want to go back to the fateful schools in the countryside, where children were separated from their parents, working for free in agricultural work. That era is over. Times have changed,” said Maritza, a housewife and mother of two secondary school students.
In Cuba, education is supposed to be free. Luisa, grandmother of a grandson in fifth grade, thinks it’s quite expensive. “What with buying two uniforms, a pair of tennis shoes, a backpack, a lunch box, pencils, notebooks and pens, I’ve already spent 250 dollars. In a country where there is nothing, students want to go to school in Adidas or Nike tennis shoes. The schools look like catwalks. Luckily my daughter, my grandson’s mother, sends me dollars from the US for these expenses and to prepare good snacks for him.”
A pesar de tener un nivel de vida un poco mejor, Luisa reconoce que es muy deprimente la vida actual de los cubanos. “En los barrios apenas ves muchachos jugando en las calles. Y han aumentado los niños, como mi nieto, que sus madres han emigrado y son cuidados por sus abuelos». Dentro de un tiempo, los progenitores sacarán del país a sus hijos. Y en Cuba solo quedarán los más viejos.
Despite having a slightly better standard of living, Luisa acknowledges that life in Cuba today is very depressing. “In the neighbourhoods, you hardly see any children playing in the streets. And there are more children, like my grandson, whose mothers have emigrated and who are cared for by their grandparents. In time, parents will take their children out of the country. And only the old people will remain in Cuba.
Translated by GH
