Between good and not-so-good grades

Countryside schools

By Luis Sexto

The school year that begins in September writes the first words of the epitaph for countryside schools. It is not this article’s intention to publish the details of the government’s decision. They are well known. But some details must be mentioned to facilitate this commentary.

The students in 10th grade — the first of three college-preparatory grades — began this year to take upper-middle courses in a building set up for that purpose in urban areas of each municipality, mainly in the eastern region. In Matanzas, high-school students in the vast citrus-producing area of Jagüey Grande moved into municipal schools as (home-based) day students or semi-boarding students.

For now, college-bound students in 11th and 12th grades will end up in countryside schools. Their graduation will mark the end of these schools, disseminated through the Cuban plains as an architectonic and pedagogical footnote that in its early days was original, useful and flexible.

What should be the epitaph for this educational concept? In Cuba, one answer is not enough. Though some in Miami or Madrid refuse to admit it, Cuban society allows for a variety of opinions, whose expression (though not totally manifested in the media or in assemblies) is voiced by the people.

Therefore, some believe that this process of school renewal, which began to surprise parents and students months ago, is the sudden dismantling of revolutionary ideas that are fundamental to education. Others believe that the cost of so many schools distant from the urban centers was excessive. And others opine that shutting them down has been an official confirmation that they failed in their pedagogical task to instill in young people superior ethical and cultural values.

This writer believes that there is a combination of several causes. But, in the first place, economic reasons had the greatest influence, an influence recognized even by President Raúl Castro.

How much did it cost to educate one young person in the countryside, combining studies and work? The magazine Bohemia looked into that figure in 2008, and the vice minister of education in charge of college-bound studies confessed that “to estimate the average cost of a student […] in the countryside is almost impossible, because the estimate depends on the peculiarities of each territory.”

According to the centenarian magazine, “we couldn’t find that figure in the municipalities and provinces visited by this publication,” and the estimates made by some turned out to be outrageously wrong. “The truth is that it cannot be a trifle. Just figure out the cost of fuel spent in the transportation of teachers, often daily, and add to that the periodic transportation of students.” More than 100,000 students were matriculated in those schools.

So, we have to admit the truth: Cuba revises, even modifies what might seem untouchable. Because, although the Cuban government has never been stingy in terms of the educational sector, now it must look through rational glasses — in other words, realistically — at the expenses made for an expensive type of pedagogy, in a country that is going through a structural dysfunction of the economy and, above all, is the victim of a world crisis and the commercial and financial restrictions generated and maintained by the U.S. blockade.

In effect, the numbers have imposed a decision capable of forcing a turn in a social sector that has been looked after with the same attention paid to a unique or rare variety of roses. But there are other elements that must be considered. And, to do that, I must make several historical references.

After the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the rest of the so-called socialist camp, the vertical descent of the GNP to below zero, the paralysis of 50 percent of the industrial capacity, the appearance of material needs, and the scant ability of the population to solve them began to affect our ethical values, resulting in the loss of moral, patriotic, familial and work-related values.

The countryside schools experienced the same insufficiencies and deficiencies of the so-called Special Period. Maybe it was during those years when some people started to wonder if the creation of that educational system had really helped to form the basis for “the New Man.”

Bluntly put, what we saw was young people prostituting themselves to tourists or devising ways to leave the country to find what in Cuba they couldn’t. Of course, it was an earth-shaking deception, which, some thought, had been planned in silence and behind masks.

Not all of us were convinced at the time that an education based on “distance parenting” — removing teenagers from the family home — would be as successful as predicted. Raúl Castro himself admitted at the latest meeting of the National Assembly that, in addition to alleviating the economic burdens, the gradual elimination of the countryside schools would give parents a greater participation in the formation of their children. The acknowledgment of the president of State and Government is a solid-enough argument.

Born of José Martí’s thoughts, the revolutionary idea of a school education linked to manual labor should not have failed in its essential values. Perhaps it will need a well-thought-out reformulation that can be debated and applied in other spatial and pedagogic terms.

However, we must admit that the schools did not instill in the students an interest for the land and manual labor. Perhaps the schools did not receive the total support of agricultural companies; perhaps teachers and administrators were unable to integrate manual labor as an ethical element of education. The facets of this analysis are many. Most likely, more research will be needed.

But this commentator must be careful not to contradict himself. And even though the new and bold measure implies, to a certain point, a rectification and brings together several motives, we mustn’t deny the role of the countryside schools in the furtherance and universalization of education.

We must acknowledge that without them, without the scholarships they provided, the Revolution might not have been able to respond to a growing demand for schools and agricultural manpower. I shall not go into the reasons why that manpower was lacking. From those boarding schools came an increase in the labor and professional force, a work force so well prepared that we can state that nowhere else in Latin America do you find laborers with such high levels of academic training.

Summing up, any opinion about the process whereby the Cuban school system modifies part of its concepts must bear in mind that the changes in this sector do not imply a restriction or reduction in the strategic policy regarding education. It seems to me that the current path aims to correct insufficiencies, deviations, and carelessness that in past years hampered even college education.

Therefore, it is obvious that the decision is in Cuba’s best interests and shows that Cuba’s most enlightened men and women know how to confront the urgencies of the moment. If an epitaph is needed, this is, in my judgment, the best one to a concluding stage.

Cuban journalist Luis Sexto was awarded the 2009 José Martí National Journalism Prize. Sexto is part of the team of Progreso Semanal/Weekly.