A highly educated population?

By Miguel Sales

(Diario de Cuba) Since 1959 the Government of Cuba has devoted considerable resources to the national education system. The literacy campaign of 1961, confiscation of private schools, the involvement of universities and the creation of new specialized institutions were, according to the official propaganda, measures to transform the island into a "world power in education." Atthe same time, it was to create a system of indoctrination that would shape the thinking from early childhood in Marxist-Leninist ideology-fidelista.

Throughout the world the choristers of Castroism repeated since one of the "achievements" of the Cuban revolution is the spectacular development of education. These triumphalist proclamations are based more on the slogans and manipulated statistics disseminated by the Government of Havana on objective and verifiable data provided by international organizations.

Without considering the anthropological damage they have caused to several generations of Cubans insistent indoctrination received over the years in the classroom and the need to feign an enthusiastic adherence to the "revolutionary" values for further studies, it is possible to evaluate system performance Castro on objective and measurable educational terms.

The first thing that jumps out is the poor quality of university education. Whatever the consulted international classification (Shanghai, Oxford or CSIC), the best Cuban institution, the University of Havana, not even figure among the top 1,000 of the world. For example, in the most recent classification of the Superior Council of Scientific Research of Spain (CSIC), the University of Havana is ranked 20 in the Caribbean, behind institutions of Mexico, Jamaica and Puerto Rico, and ranked 1,741 in qualifying world. That is, that in the world there are 1,740 universities, some very poor countries in Asia and Africa, as exceeding the best Cuban center third cycle.

It should be noted that the methods of classification of these entities are becoming more sophisticated year and take into account cultural differences, the economic context and the internal organization. The assessment, in terms of visibility, impact and activities, is established by a wide range of indicators of institutional prestige and academic, such as articles in specialized publications, results of the research, publishing material high - level use of performance new technologies, international recognition, etc. These values, combined weighted basis, show a numerical index that determines the range of the study center in the world hierarchy. It would be absurd to think that these rating agencies operate in coordination under instructions from the CIA with the intention of discrediting the Cuban government. Simply Island universities are not up to the educational and research needs of the contemporary world.

This is the result of more than half a century of pharaonic investment, preferential attention to the education sector, "pedagogical innovation" in the line of Makarenko and Castro I, and systematic efforts to create the "new man", which we hardly spoken in the island. Without forgetting that the starting point of the --público and privado-- Cuban educational system in 1960 was relatively high for a country of intermediate development and that the illiteracy rate approaching 20%, nothing scandalous for the time. That year the global average was 40% (Mexico: 30%; Puerto Rico: 11%, Chile 10%, Argentina: 9%). And although in some Castroist website states that during the Republic "each year increased the army of illiterate adults , " the fact is that since 1902 the number of Cubans who could read and write decreased from 30% to 80% of the population.

Deficiencies of university education do more than summarize and reflect the problems afflicting the education system and Cuban society as a whole. Essentially, the educational policy of Castroism has been based on the extent and massification, at theexpense of quality. You had to make everyone could read four slogans and sign his name, to proclaim to the Island "territory free of illiteracy" and then fight the "battle of the sixth grade" to give everyone a certificate and finally try that the greatest possible number of young people began college to get a diploma, without considering the academic results and the calling of students.

The effects of this policy have given rise to very strange situations. In 1980, two decades after the Castro government declared that the entire population was literate, arrived in Key West around 35,000 exiles from the port of Mariel. US authorities found that about 7% of the "Mariel boatlift" were functionally illiterate, that is, were not able to read and understand a simple form and complete it .

In assessing this fact must be borne in mind that the vast majority of newcomers were from urban areas and were adults between 20 and 40 years old. What would have been at that time the actual rate of literacy among people over 50 years living in rural areas of the island? It is not known, among other reasons because the Cuban government has never conducted a follow -up study to determine the effectiveness of the famous literacy campaign of 1961 and likely relapse into illiteracy by disuse occurred among older adults living in the countryside, who received a brief for a few weeks and then not again touch a book in the rest of his life instruction. This is just one example of many that induce cautiously take the triumphalism of the regime in education.

The overall assessments made by rating agencies using statistical criteria to assign a value to comparative systems -something teaching may seem extremely abstracto-- are borne out , in my particular experience, empirical data from almost 20 years of work UNESCO. As everyone knows, UNESCO is the organization of the United Nations System in charge of education, science and culture.

In the performance of my duties at the headquarters of this organization, often I had to deal with professionals graduated in Cuban universities. Except very few honorable exceptions, these graduates caused astonishment at the vastness of his ignorance of elementary subjects, the anachronism of what they had learned and lack of general culture. Some of them were even teachers or university professors, but did not know basic facts of history, geography and other subjects that are normally studied in primary school, drafted poorly in Spanish, incurred in misspellings and exhibited obvious limitations to work in other languages .

For its pervasiveness, these deficiencies are not attributable to a lack of intelligence or ability of Cuban university, but highlight the gaps in the content and methods of training.

The quality of higher education on the island has also resented the lack of academic freedom, the integral politicization and the imposition of Marxist orthodoxy, an anachronistic ideology, which in the nineteenth century had shown the error of their predictions and weakness of his arguments. To the above, it should be added the low educational level dragging students from primary education throughout the secondary cycle and that leads them to enter college with deficiencies identified above.

In turn, this feature is linked to shortages and poor training of teachers. Although in the past decade the school population decreases each year as a result of migration and demographic crisis, primary school teachers barely and the government has had to resort to retired teachers to cover the deficit of teachers. Apparently, not much interest among young people by studying pedagogy and devote himself to teaching.

The situation is aggravated by the few career prospects that the system offers its graduates. Overcrowding and the alleged "free" university studies have ended up creating several generations of frustrated people, adorned with a degree devalued who is of little use , because on one hand they lack sufficient knowledge to play a role at the height diploma and, on the other, the socioeconomic structure of the country can not offer them employment commensurate with their qualifications. So infest the engineers cities driving taxis, exarquitectos serving mojitos in restaurants or biologists reconverted guides, as well as a multitude of proletarians and proletarians of sex, as Castro I said in 1998, "they are the most educated of the world".

The idea that in the future may develop rapidly Cuba once Castro was overcome, because it has "a highly educated population," it is above all a rhetorical formula of comfort. Like so many other aspects of that regime, the education system is a gigantic fraud, serving the propaganda needs of the state. His inspiration is not Makarenko or Lunacharski but Grigori Potemkin Count, the lover of Catherine the Great that adorned the miserable villages as a theater, with flowers in the windows and dapper peasants, smiling saluting the passing of imperial procession.