By Gordon Bonin Of the NEWS Staff

Free universal education from first grade through college is considered one of the triumphs of the revolution in Cuba. Education has been cast as a leading light in Fidel Castro’s regime ever since a 1961 campaign lifted Cuba’s literacy rate from 76 percent to 96 percent of the population, where it remains today.

During a week in Cuba last month, a group of Maine educators saw examples of preschools, primary schools and secondary schools — the latter refer to junior high schools — that revealed a lack of supplies and learning materials, but an abundance of enthusiasm and affection between teachers and students.

They saw large class sizes and crowded classrooms, but discipline despite the cramped quarters. They saw a system short on paper, where students share well-worn textbooks, and the primary instructional technology is blackboard and chalk. Some schools lack drinkable water, sometimes even running water. Students have to bring their own from home.
They saw a system where learning is tightly linked to real-life situations and work. And they found a system marked by the integration of social and moral education into the curriculum. Heroes of Cuba’s revolution and political slogans are found in every school, including day care centers.

Tammy Nelson, a high school Spanish teacher in Presque Isle, said, ‘‘I’m just amazed that they have such a well-educated population, but they have nothing. We saw four kids huddled around one book in a classroom with just one map on the wall and a picture of Che Guevara. ‘‘We think we need so much,’’ Nelson said. ‘‘They are an example of making do with what you have.’’

While teaching in Cuba is a prestigious profession, the past dozen years have been trying times because of Cuba’s economic straits. Though teacher salaries fall in the middle or a little higher on Cuba’s pay scale, educators have been abandoning the profession to find jobs paying dollars, the preferred currency. This forced the government to boost teacher salaries by a third last fall.

 

Pupils at the Nicolas Estebanes Primary School in Havana read one of several letters from maine students that were brought to Cuba by the Maine teachers. (NEWS Photo by Bob Delong)

Margarita Marnik, who works with special needs students in SAD 34 (Belfast area), observed that Cubans feel they are losing ground on some of the advances made since the revolution in such areas as education and health care. According to Cubans the driving forces are the lack of resources and the current emphasis on tourism to earn the country hard currency, she said.

Marnik, who was born in Cuba, said that Cuban students are beginning to question the need for a professional degree when they see teachers and doctors leaving their professions to work in the tourist industry where they earn dollars.

Nevertheless, Tamara Ellis Stafford, an early childhood education researcher at the University of Maine, said, ‘‘It is a country that is proud of its educational system. When teachers spoke it was clear that they valued what they were doing.’’

• Next page: Cuba's crowded classrooms