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