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Battle for education - 06/06/2006
by RON RIDENOUR
Battle for educationRON RIDENOUR on the Cuban revolution's drive to erradicate illiteracy. IT was popular in the 1960s-70s for backpacking hippies and professional musicians to travel to India in search of spiritual values and experiences. Many other well-meaning First World people wishing to help illiterate, out-of-school children pay a monthly sum to sponsor a child's education. Although the Indian state runs primary schools without direct costs to families, millions of families simply have no money for school materials or clothing and must use their children to work for a living. Though there has been progress in decreasing the numbers of poor and illiterates, India still has the world's greatest number of illiterates, 350 million, and out-of-school children. A 2001 UNICEF report shows that 20 per cent of children from ages six to 14 do not attend school and women are still predominantly illiterate. UNICEF points to the causes - inadequate instructions and poorly educated teachers, the caste and class system, discrimination against women, forced child labour and a general system based on unequal opportunities. The Indian government, apparently, would rather accept that a quarter of its people are impoverished and 35 per cent are illiterate than it would choose an economic system and government that would guarantee "that no child be left without schooling, food and clothing, that no young person be left without opportunity to study, that no-one be left without access to studies, culture and sports." Such a commitment is the choice of the Cuban people and their government, as codified in their socialist constitution. Within a couple of years following the 1959 revolution, all Cubans had been taught to read and write and all children were attending school. Not one child, even in the hardest economic years, has gone without schooling. Nor have parents paid a penny - not even taxes - for the nation's extensive educational system. Cuba is not richer than India or most of the many other countries where illiteracy and out-of-school children abound. The significant difference, which guarantees all Cubans free education plus free health care, cultural and sports activities, necessary food on the table and a roof over their head, is the Cuban decision to collectivise the economy and thus share the wealth that they all produce. The leaders of most nations decided in Dakar five years ago to assure universal primary education by 2015, yet most state leaders do nothing or all too little to keep their promise. Cuba and Venezuela do. Eighteen months ago, Cuban President Fidel Castro and his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez signed an agreement to assure that goal not only for Venezuela but for all Latin Americans. "Dawn" is the treaty's name, ALBA in Spanish, the Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America. This pact is based on mutual co-operation, solidarity and respect and is their answer to United States capitalism's ALCA plan for both American continents. ALCA, like the current North American Free Trade Agreement between the US, Canada and Mexico, favours unrestricted marketing and neoliberalism, so that transnational companies and the US could dominate even more than they do now. Mexico, for example, went from being a maize exporter before NAFTA to being an importer with additional unemployment for six million former maize farmers. Castro and Chavez and, now, Bolivia's President Evo Morales, seek to create programmes that can bring food to all stomachs and for thought. ALBA removes trade barriers and customs taxes, but not just for the rich, and provides investments for all member nations by increasing intra-regional bank co-operation. Under these provisions, Venezuela is financing some Cuban industrial and road construction projects and it sells 90,000 tons of oil daily to Cuba at $27 per ton instead of the world price of $75. A key provision of ALBA is to bring literacy, further education and health care to the entire continent south of the United States-NAFTA border. Cuba is providing 13,000 doctors and nurses, 70 per cent of all public health personnel, to Venezuela and a comparable number of medical personnel to other Latin American and Africa nations. The first part of the educational goal has been achieved - basic literacy. The programme, known as Mision Robinson, has been financed by Venezuela and brought into being by thousands of Cuban teachers. They have taught 1.5 million Venezuelans to read and write. Educational missionaries have set up courses so that 162,000 Venezuelan youths, who otherwise could not have attended high school, have been able to study and achieve secondary school diplomas. Mision Robinson uses the Cuban study technique "Yes I Can" in 20 countries in Latin America, Africa and even in New Zealand. ALBA also bolsters Cuba's revolutionary tradition of offering free university education, especially medical training, to the poor from the Third World. Fashioned after Cuba's Latin American Medical School (ELAM), which was built in 1998, a second ELAM is being built in Venezuela. It will be the tenth medical school in Latin America and Africa founded by Cuba professors since 1976, when the first one was built in Yemen. Venezuela's ELAM will be able to provide free medical training to 100,000 physicians over a decade. This commitment will amount to the equivalent of a $20-30 billion contribution to developing countries. 'Spending on education has doubled and represents one-fifth of the budget.'The first 1,500 medical students from 28 countries graduated from Cuba's ELAM last summer, as did another 100 graduates of different medical programmes, the latest of 4,000 international students over four decades. A similar number of international students have also graduated in other fields. Cuba even accepts poor students from the US, where Third World conditions exist for many millions. There were 88 US graduates at the first ELAM ceremony - 85 per cent were non-white and 73 per cent were female. Cuba is also stepping up efforts to achieve full social justice with equality for its own people through the campaign known as the "battle of ideas." The campaign is based on Cuban liberation hero Jose Marti's ideal that "no social justice is possible without educational equality." Che Guevara interpreted Marti's ideal by considering the whole of Cuba as one great university. One of the "battle's" targets is universal higher education and the promotion and reinforcement of solidarity consciousness, especially in light of the far-reaching techniques used by cultural imperialism to encourage individualism. To reach this goal, state spending on education has doubled and now represents one-fifth of the national budget. It begins in day care centres with the Educate Your Child programme, using non-formal ways of training. Cuba has five television stations instead of two a decade ago. Two of these channels are educationally oriented. Teachers use television and video programmes and children learn computer skills in primary school. English is taught from the age of seven. Primary classes now have a student-teacher ratio of one to 20 and even a lower ratio for 428 schools for children with disabilities. There are also classrooms in hospitals and in children's homes taught by peripatetic teachers. Pre-university education has been expanded and the student-teacher ratio reduced to one-30. All teachers are trained to become educators responsible for the all-round education of a set number of students. A new group of peripatetic teachers, the Jose Marti Contingent, includes 4,000 art instructors teaching visual arts, music, theatre and dance in all communities. Another programme, Study As Work, provides three hours of classes four days a week and part-time jobs to 150,000 young people who had neither studied nor worked. Fifty thousand new teachers, who would otherwise not have become teachers, have been graduated through these work-study courses in the pastl with human problems. They frequent homes where families have special needs, such as elderly people, those with disabilities and social behaviour problems. The Battle of Ideas has brought university education to every municipality. Four hundred thousand people are studying at university level in this way. Many take courses part-time while working. Another 86,000 students study full-time at Cuba's 63 universities. With nearly 500,000 people currently studying, 4.5 per cent of the population, will acquire university diplomas. Minister of Education Dr Luis Gomez Gutierrez explained Cuba's Battle of Ideas to participants of the World Conference on Basic Literacy Training held in February 2005 in Havana, saying: "The idea is to reach everybody, that no-one is ever abandoned or unattended. Education reaches everyone from early childhood and throughout life, excluding no-one. "We pin our hopes on this utopia and the results we have obtained breathe life into our optimism. We are building the fairest, most equal society that has ever been known to the history of humankind." • Ron Ridenour is the author of Cuba at the Crossroads and Backfire: The CIA's Biggest Burn (Editorial Jose Marti, 1991) two other books and many articles about Cuba. WEB LINK:www.ronridenour.com

Free Cuban med school trains US docs

Expert argues it's more than a Fidel Castro publicity stunt. Could Canadians be among future grads?
By Peter Woodford
Cuba may have a long list of failings as a nation, but it's always punched above its weight when it comes to training highly-skilled physicians. And it's even chipped in to help its less fortunate neighbours train up docs, including Honduras, Venezuela and the US. Yes, that's right, the US.
After Hurricane Mitch devastated the region in 1998 the fiscally enfeebled communist state decided to open a med school called the Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina (ELAM) in the outskirts of Havana especially for disadvantaged foreigners. And how much is tuition? Nada.
All but Fidel Castro's harshest critics would be hard pressed to find fault with this altruistic endeavour — particularly when you compare this to the swashbuckling Cuban foreign policy of the 1970s and 80s which saw the state export violent revolution instead of medical knowledge. Some members of American government must surely be humiliated by the fact that 89 US citizens, for whom homegrown med schools were financially out of reach, are currently enrolled at ELAM. Many American doctors now graduate with a debt load of between $115,000 and $150,000 US.
US TOO?Because of a Bush administration policy of barring US citizens from visiting Cuba, it was initially rather tricky for Americans to study at ELAM. But in 2004 a group of 27 members of Congress, led by Harlem Democrat Charles Rangel, successfully petitioned Secretary of State Colin Powell to exempt ELAM students from the ban. A few American ELAM graduates have already headed home and passed US equivalency exams. The grads report the facilities aren't exactly deluxe (the menu consists mainly of rice and beans and students sleep together in large dormitory rooms), but otherwise the program gets a thumbs up.
So far no Canadians have enrolled in ELAM, but Dr Gillian Jiménez, of Cuba's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told the Globe and Mail: "If we had an application from Canada, we would evaluate it. The program could be opened to include Canadians." Considering Canadian med students routinely graduate $100,000 in debt, it could become an attractive option.
We know that Cuba is far from ideal when it comes to remunerating physicians (see "New NS mentoring program to speed up IMG accreditation" Vol 2, No 12 for one Cuban immigrant doctor's story) and advanced medical technology on the island is decidedly lacking. But there are aspects of Cuban healthcare that are undeniably successful, such as its infant mortality rate which is similar to Canada's and lower than the United States's.
FIRSTHAND ACCOUNTTo get to the bottom of this most unusual med school, we spoke to Trudeau Foundation Scholar Robert Huish. Mr Huish, a PhD candidate at Simon Fraser University, has visited ELAM to research his dissertation on the institution.
NRM: Where does Canada fit in the ELAM picture?
Robert Huish: Canada is the only country in the hemisphere that doesn't have representation at the school. Perhaps if Canadian students attended the school, it would be a clear admission to our national human resource for health crisis, what with BC alone losing 400 physicians a year, and UBC only graduating about 220 students annually.
NRM: Do potential students need to speak fluent Spanish to apply to ELAM?
RH: No. There are hundreds, if not thousands of ELAM students who enter the program without speaking Spanish. In fact, the program dedicates part of the first two years to training in language skills and biosciences.
NRM: What was your impression of the Cuban healthcare system up close?
RH: There are many attributes in the Cuban system that would astound most physicians here in Canada. Because Cuba's doctor to patient ratio is about 1:160 there is an abundance of human resources for health, which makes for greater accessibility and lessened wait times to see a physician or a specialist.
NRM: Cuba clearly can't afford advanced medical technology, how can it compensate?
RH: Cuban healthcare is a human-resource strong, patient-focused system of prevention at the community level. Early diagnosis of chronic and degenerative diseases is common thanks to the frequency of consultations and the accessibility to community clinics, despite the lack of high-tech diagnostic resources.
NRM: Even if you ignore the paltry doctor salaries, Cuban healthcare does seem to deliver a lot of bang for its healthcare buck. Are there lessons for Canada?
RH: When Canadian doctors entertain new ideas on how to improve our system, I would strongly encourage them to take note of the Cuban experience, and realize that we may have more possible solutions than once imagined — solutions that come from the investment in human empowerment.
From what I've seen first hand, Cuban patients spend most of their time in the healthcare system personally interacting with their physician and receiving treatment — consultations routinely go well beyond the 15 minute time-frame that we are used to in this country.

http://www.nationalreviewofmedicine.com/issue/2006/02_15/3_policy_politics04_3.html

ELAM Latin American School of Medicine graduates first class in

Havana

Published: Sun August 21, 2005

By VANESSA ARRINGTON Associated Press Writer

A Latin American medical school created as a regional initiative in 1998 after two hurricanes devastated Caribbean and Central American nations graduated its first class on Saturday.
Students at the school come from Latin American, Africa and the United States. Most come from low-income families and receive a free education on the condition they return home to serve their communities after graduation.
On Saturday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuban President Fidel Castro—who have become close allies as they stake their leadership on opposition to the United States—handed out diplomas to several of the 1,500 graduates.
“This graduation was just a dream nearly seven years ago,” Castro said at the ceremony. “Today is proof of the capacity of human beings to reach the most lofty goals.”
The leaders of Panama and several Caribbean nations also attended the graduation.
Earlier in the day, Castro said the group of politicians had come together Saturday for the school, and that “we’re not conspiring, or wanting to destabilize any government or region.” His comments were an apparent reference to comments this week by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on a trip to Latin America.
Rumsfeld and other members of the Bush administration have said Chavez and Castro are destabilizing influences on teetering Latin American democracies. On his way home from visits to Paraguay and Peru, Rumsfeld told reporters Thursday that “there certainly is evidence that both Cuba and Venezuela have been involved in the situation in Bolivia in unhelpful ways.”
Social uprisings in Bolivia have pushed out two presidents in less than two years.
The medical school was created after Hurricanes George and Mitch devastated several Caribbean and Central American nations, provoking serious health and sanitation issues.
Dozens of Americans, many of them minorities from urban neighborhoods, are among those currently attending the medical school. Fifteen new students from the United States also recently arrived to Cuba to start studies this year.
Only one American was among those graduating Saturday.