NewsMax.com. Monday, Aug. 7, 2000
During the Elian Gonzalez saga, many of the media's seemingly pro-Castro journalists raved about Cuba's allegedly superb educational system and suggested the boy would be better off as a beneficiary of that system than he would be were he to remain in the United States.
Newsweek's Eleanor Clift went so far as to proclaim: "To be a poor child in Cuba may in many instances be better than being a poor child in Miami and I'm not going to condemn their lifestyle so gratuitously."
On May 1, Clift defended her "lifestyle" remarks on Fox's "The O'Reilly Factor": "I can understand why a rational, loving father can believe that his child will be protected in a state where he doesn't have to worry about going to school and being shot at, where drugs
are not a big problem, where he has access to free medical care and where the literacy rate, I believe, is higher than this country's."
Should Clift take the time to read yesterday's Miami Herald she might get a better idea about her concept of Cuba as an ideal place to raise a child. The story explains in stark detail the price Cuba's children pay for that literacy rate she believes is higher than it is in the United States.
That price includes children ages 4 to 13 being recruited into a junior version of Cuba's notorious neighborhood spy networks, where neighbor tattles on neighbor and children tattle on their parents.
In brief, Cuban students are first and foremost the object of an intensive yearlong brainwashing exercise that aspires to produce perfectly submissive subjects of the all-powerful communist state. This is what lies in wait for Elian Gonzalez once Castro's brainwashing psychiatrists finish
erasing his memories of what freedom in the U.S. was like.
This is the Cuba that Newsweek's Brook Larmer and John Leland wrote about in an April 17 article comparing Cuba favorably with these dangerous, uncaring United States: "Elian might expect a nurturing life in Cuba, sheltered from the crime and social breakdown that would be part of his
upbringing in Miami. ... The education and health-care systems, both built since the revolution, are among the best in the Americas, despite chronic shortages of supplies."
"They say education in Cuba is free, but we have it on very hard terms,'' Havana parent Lázara Brito told the Herald. "Education in Cuba has a political foundation. It doesn't make students think. It teaches them that the Cuban way is the right way and everything outside it is
wrong.''
Rolando Alfonso Borges, head of the Ideological Department of the Cuban Communist Party's Central Committee, bluntly explained to the government's second national education workshop at Santiago de Cuba what education in Cuba is all about:
"The front line of political-ideological work with children is school, and the first soldiers are teachers and other education workers," he said. "We have to put our hearts into political-ideological work, and it must be done in a systematic way, where each section of the
educational system has specific responsibilities that it must account for and which the party must control.''
Notes the Herald: "Political indoctrination is the part of the Cuban educational system rarely mentioned alongside the praise that the country receives for achieving near-universal literacy, for having one of the best academic performances among Latin American countries, according to
UNESCO, and for developing top-notch teachers.
But political indoctrination permeates every facet of the vaunted Cuban educational system. "The concept is to use education as an instrument to create a new man, whose god is revolution,'' said Luis Zúñiga, director of the human rights division of the Cuban American National
Foundation, author of a booklet on the Cuban education system titled "The Children of Fidel Castro."
While U.S. students head back to school this month for another year of math, science and grammar, the Herald says that "children starting school in Cuba will learn songs and poems about Castro and Cuban Revolution heroes such as Che Guevara and Celia Sánchez."
And the close surveillance the communist state maintains over its citizens will begin with the opening of "a dossier on each student, where not only their grades, but their political and religious activities will be recorded. The expediente acumulativo escolar, as the dossier is called,
will follow the student to his or her job, where bosses will keep similar tabs."
Grade school students of both sexes will be inducted into the Pioneros, or Pioneers, a twisted Communist version of the Boy Scouts with emphasis on the military and on keeping a watchful eye on your classmates. The youngsters will perform KGB-like neighborhood watches, "in which, generally
accompanied by adults, they'll stop and question passersby for identification, and keep an eye on neighbors."
Middle and high school students will begin their days by singing anthems and reciting speeches about a figure of the Cuban Revolution, or talking about a current or historical event – from the Communist perspective. Their teachers will start each class with 15 more minutes of similar
discussion, as required by law. Students will learn how to clean, assemble and use weapons.
Middle and high school students who hope to go on to college are forced to join and remain active in the Communist Youth Union. They must participate in endless conferences, marches and rallies and take more military training. They also must spend 45 days of their summer at a school/work camp in
the countryside, working in fields during the morning and attending classes in the afternoon, the Herald explained.
"The idea behind the country schools is to allow the student to develop a sense of community and teamwork while learning about the country's crops. In reality, say parents and teachers, it translates into cheap labor in often shabby conditions – and an opportunity for children to grow
up too fast.
"Promiscuity, pregnancies, thefts, smoking and escapes to nearby towns are common occurrences, said Emilia Ruvira, a former drawing teacher in a Havana technical high school who helped supervise a country school as part of her duties.
"The school was a wooden house, like a shed, that had bare cement floors, outhouses and horrible food," she recalled for the Herald. "There were six teachers and some staff there – 10 people in all to supervise 300 kids. At 15, you want to discover a lot of things. Almost
everybody had sexual relations. And with contraceptives being over the counter, it was easy."
Said the mother of one young girl: "My daughter has not and never will she go to la escuela al campo. The kids do what they want. Sometimes girls and boys sleep in the same room, divided by a sheet. Thousands of girls have gotten pregnant – by teachers themselves."
The Herald wrote about a notorious preschool and kindergarten lesson in which the teacher asks students whether they believe God exists. Children who respond 'yes' are asked to close their eyes and ask God for a piece of candy. When they open their eyes and their hands are empty, the teacher
asks them to close their eyes again. This time, the teacher says, ask Fidel for the candy.
When they do, the teacher places a piece of candy in each of their hands.
"See,'' the teacher will say, "there is no God. There is only Fidel.''
This is the same Cuba about which NBC's Jim Avila said from Cuba on the April 26 MSNBC simulcast of "Imus in the Morning": "The one thing that I've learned about Cubans in the many times that I have visited here in the last few years, is that it is mostly a nationalistic country,
not primarily a communist country."
But despite the best efforts of Castro and his communist government, it's not working. As it did in Eastern Europe, the thirst for freedom stayed alive through years of brutal communists attempts to suppress it.
"The goal of this system is to create false nationalism – something that has hurt our youth tremendously,'' Roberto De Miranda, president of El Colegio de Pedagogos Independientes (the Independent Teachers' Association) in Havana told the Herald. "It is a grotesque invention, a
lie that has been perpetrated for 40 years.''
"There isn't one young person on the island who believes in Communism,'' he said. "Our youth is more rebellious by the day and less [academically] prepared. They reject the system because there is too much manipulation. We are fooling ourselves if we think otherwise.'' | 