We could learn a lot about education from Cuba

The college year is finishing; the economic system is buzzing alongside, income is up, and unemployment is down. However, there isn’t sufficient cash for the colleges. The drama in Salem is going on; Education Secretary Betsy DeVos wants to privatize public schooling, and Oregon colleges are getting some other reduction.

How is this feasible in one of the world’s richest international locations?

I replicated this after a go to Cuba in February, wherein I, along with four different Eugene educators, attended a worldwide convention with 3,000 educators from around the sector. We desired to analyze more about human beings and instructional gadgets, producing a rather literate populace with one of the highest literacy fees in the world. We questioned how a negative Third World United States of America could have a ninety-eight percent literacy rate and provide free training to its teens from preschool to graduate college.

We attended workshops led by educators from Cuba, Latin America, and Europe. We visited several faculties and spoke to teachers, college students, professors, and normal Cuban citizens. We discovered that half of 1,000,000 Cubans are involved in the instructional machine with some potential in a rustic of 11 million humans. We learned plenty. The priority of the Cuban society locations on education has inspired us. Education is considered a human and civil property of each Cuban citizen.

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Before the revolution, more than 1/2 of the populace was illiterate. A primary action after the process was to start a literacy campaign that reached the faraway villages inside the geographical region. Children are extraordinarily valued in Cuban society. They receive high-quality, excessive-pre-faculty education, unfastened elementary and secondary schooling, and lose better training. Every scholar gets loose breakfast and lunch in college, and after-college activities are to be had for all who want them. Cubans additionally get free health care throughout their lives.

The education system places a high value on connecting faculties to households and groups. Many faculties open at 6.30 a.m. And nearly 12 hours later, supplying free morning and after-faculty care for the children of operating dad and mom. The first part of the day is devoted to breakfast and unfastened play. Core lecturers take location from 8:40 a.m. To 12:30 p.m., followed by lunch and video games or recess. In the afternoon, youngsters interact in various sports, including health, art, track, and sports activities. After-faculty programs are organized around areas of hobby that the young human beings pick.

Cuba’s colleges offer a selection of academic possibilities, similar to imparting remarkable song and art education. Schools offer numerous hours per week of track and art for college students in any respect stage. Students in each college we visited greeted us with music and dance performances. It turned into superb. Cuban educators were astonished when we advised them that songs and artwork were reduced in many faculties inside the United States because they didn’t have enough money for electives. They informed us that artwork and track are an important part of the Cuban academic machine and are very important for human development.

The values of peace, justice, cooperation, and humanism are vital curriculum factors. Cubans believe that by being grounded in their true way of life and records, young people become sturdy citizens who will improve their United States. Pride in Cuba’s independence is very glaring.

Together with the wages of different public personnel, teachers’ salaries are very low using our requirements. They enjoy the unfastened fitness care and schooling structures, and housing and food are particularly subsidized. Also, using regulation, the most magnificent length in essential colleges is 25 college students. The elegance over 25 gets a 2d trainer. In secondary schools, the most are 30.

This revel in has had a profound effect on us. At a time when public education inside the United States and plenty of the arena are under an unprecedented attack, we would see an infant-centered gadget, shielding out and committed to supplying extraordinary education under difficult monetary conditions. The merchandise of this instructional device is students who seem confident, well-adjusted, and enthusiastic.

Cuba is a terrible use with many financial and political issues, made plenty worse using the U.S. Embargo. Still, its treatment of its young people and the focal point on schooling is exemplary. We have a lot to research from Cuba and its human beings. Pete Mandrapa, an instructor in Eugene-place faculties because of the overdue 1970s, is a member of the Eugene Education Association and the Community Alliance for Public Education.

Sandy Ryan
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