Reading Seminar Entry.

To begin with, I truly believe that Reading Socratic Seminars were completely fruitful because they led us to know a wide assortment/range of Educational Policies in different countries. For instance, Chile, Cuba, United States, among others. From this, my reading Socratic seminar tackled the topic of “The Cuban education system: Lessons and Dilemmas”. It was totally fascinating because of the features that Cuban Educational System has.

 

Below you will find some characteristics of the text:

‘The Cuban education system: lessons and dilemmas’ is a work produced by Lavinia Gasperini, included in the LCSHD Paper series of the World Bank’s Department of Human Development.  It is important to emphasize that Ms. Gasperini earned her B.A. degree in Education with her presentation on the Cuban education system, and this reading is a combination of information gathered through both a study tour of Cuba and other documents.

 

High-quality Education in a Poor country

Although Cuba has been widely criticized because of the country’s political decisions, almost no words are dedicated to their schools’ outstanding performance when foreign policy-makers inspect their own realities . Whether some may want to acknowledge it or not, the Cuban education system demonstrates that there is no direct relationship between the national income and the quality and success of education. As a result, this papers cross-checks the available national documents as well as results from international organizations, such as UNESCO and the World Bank, in order to provide us with the main features of a successful education system.

 

The elements perused by Ms.Gasperini are as it follows:

Sustained investments in Education

According to the reading, 10 percent of Cuba’s GDP is devoted to Education, focusing on non-salary items.This sustained investment is correlated to consistent policies due to a political stability, being able to grant universal access to quality basic education.

Preparation for teachers

• 15 higher education pedagogical institutes and the pedagogical faculties provide a 5-year formal preparation of teachers for day care centers, primary school and intermediate schools.
• Training for school directors is provided at the same time as teacher training, thus directors will understand the teacher development process.
• There are pre-service teachers preparation and in-service teachers preparation too and they emphasize basic knowledge, skills, values and attitudes and there is a strong linkage between theory and practice.
• A teacher trainer candidate must complete as a prerequisite 6 or 7 years as a teacher at the level at which he or she intends to prepare teachers.

 

Community of learning teachers

For each subject (ciencias naturales, sociales) there is a colectivo pedagógico. The colectivo pedagógico meets every two weeks, in association with a metodólogo,  with the main purpose of discussing, produce materials, exchange experiences, solve problems.

 

Action research

Every teacher must carry out applied research on ways to improve learning achievement and systematize pedagogical experience. Every 2 years teachers present their researches to a “municipal education conference” and the municipalities select the best research and then the province selects one for a national conference and they provide material incentives for teachers who present the best research.

 

Community

• Teachers interact with community members and parents through mass organizations. Teachers learn about communities in this way.
• Teachers spend 80% of their time with students at school and the rest they go to students’s homes.
• Students meet together from 1 to 3 times per week and teachers visit those study houses to help parents and identify some familiar problems which can affect the learning process.

 

Teachers’ evaluation

• Evaluation is part of the teacher’s professional development, thus they must improve their practice with action research mainly.
• The social status of a teacher is high. Career growth depends on positive evaluations.
• Teachers whose students fail to perform at the norm risk cuts in pay.

 

Low cost materials

 Cuba has a monopoly on materials production (design, publishing and distribution).

 

Labor education

• Students spend time repairing and fixing their schools (furniture and materials)
• National curricula is adapted regularly for the local realities. However, curricula is controlled by the ideology of the government. They check Marx but not Piaget.

 

Participation in school management

• It is mainly guided by the Marxist principle that “Education is everybody’s responsibility”. Here, the text points out that participation is an indispensable means of addressing problems of the school. For instance: students assemblies, parents’ councils, school councils, so on.
• The participation involves children. How? Basically, by giving them appropriate tasks according to their level  (1st, 2nd, 3rd and on) and age. In primary, students discuss the class and school’s problems, clean the school, help fellow students with difficulties, work in the school garden, among other duties.

Linking school and work.

•  Since the revolution, Cuba has placed an indispensable value on relating work and study. Here, education is emphasized in the development of the “new human being” through lifelong education: students in working and workers in study. Here, education continues to form part of the school curricula: technical, vocational and polytechnical.

 

 Compulsory education.

• In terms of curriculum, primary education has 480 hours of “labor education”. It comes from the Marxist principle that is applied to “school gardens”, and the aim of this is “Education rather Production”. The last concept deals with agricultural activities, where students have to show a positive attitude towards working along with workers.

•  Work, according to children’s age, is seen as an instrument or tool of intellectual and social development, and a sharing responsibility as well. Furthermore, since it is compulsory, it may lead to the children exploitation.
•  Early years of revolution, secondary schools in the countryside were considered as an achievement of the Cuban education system. Each school was part of the agricultural development of the region. However, these schools were isolated since they hardly fulfilled the expectations of students and their families.

Technical education

• Students were mainly prepared for a productive working class. In other words, they were able to access to technical education just after having completed the 9th grade at school. This decision reflects the political choice to consolidate the State, based on industrial and agricultural education.
•  The technical education curricula was organized by public employer’s organization, and they were the ones in charge of carrying out a joint final integral evaluation about student achievement. That evaluation measured and selected students in order to be accepted at the university.

 

Outreach to rural children

• Since 1959 Cuba is duty-bound to provide education for all children. To reach this challenge the government has strategies for children who live in isolated areas. This explicit strategy, which is education for all, can be shown in more than 2000 schools which are located in mountains and rural areas with no more than 10 students. These schools offer multilateral instruction, it means from pre-K to 4th grade. Teachers need to be able to teach this multigrade classrooms so they receive special training.
• Nowadays, percentages show that there is not a huge difference between rural and regional schools. Results can show that there is just a 2,3% of difference among those schools; rural schools are provided by the same high levels of urban education.
• The idea of developing rural education is to motivate families, children and environment to stay there, to include their context and culture. In this way rural people do not emigrate to urban areas since the entire cycle is provided in rural areas. 
• As people from rural areas are different from urban people, they receive an adapted curriculum including subjects such as farm or agronomy.

 

Attention to special needs

As we discussed before, Cuba provides education for all children ‘The public role in education is to be there for students who otherwise would not be able to develop their talents in full’; that is to say all children deserve to be educated in order to draw on their skills. Special needs are met in regular schools and special educational centers. In 1959 there were 8 special educational centers, in 2000 there were 425 centers. Depending on physical and motor handicaps, children will attend one school or another.

Cuba had also implemented some itinerant teachers. It means that they are able to teach students who cannot attend to school, children who are hospitalized.

 

 

Finally, as it has been presented before, Cuba’s Educational system covers a wide variety of topics that makes it be one of the best Educational System all over the world. Along with this, in this link you will find a more up-dated information regarding The State of Education in Latin America and the Caribbean: Towards a Quality of Education for ALL 2015.