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FROM
CUBA
Free education; a signal achievement of
the Revolution
Karell Infante Mantilla, Jóvenes
sin Censura
HOLGUIN, Cuba - October (www.cubanet.org)
- On September 4, the first day of the school
year, a casual observer could easily tell
to what grade the incoming students were
going. Not by their apparent ages, but by
the state of their uniforms. Here's the
code:
New uniform: pre-school.
Colors faded: first grade.
Outgrown, threadbare, of no recognizable
color: second grade.
By the third grade either the parents got
smart and bought a uniform on the black
market or the child is practically naked.
The explanation is simple. The government
authorizes the sale of one uniform when
the child begins schooling, and more thereafter,
but not every year, under the rationing
plan.
So one uniform per student. Add to that:
the weather in Cuba is hot year-round. Children
play, run, and sweat. And a home with a
washer and dryer would be a very rare home
indeed.
You add it up.
Yet at the beginning of the school year,
students and parents are told, in no uncertain
terms, how grateful they should be to the
Revolution for the education they are about
to receive.
At the beginning of this school year, in
the presence of each municipality's First
Secretary of the Communist Party, children
were told the exact cost of school materials
and supplies, ranging from a pencil to the
TV set in the classroom. For those who can
already read, the same information is posted
in a mural somewhere in the school grounds.
Interestingly enough, the costs are given
in convertible currency, not in Cuban pesos.
Versión
original en español
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