Education Reform
Before
the collapse of the Batista regime, Cuba’s educational program was in
shambles. Before the Cuban Revolution, the literacy rate was upwards of
twenty-three percent of the population. Educational reforms by the
revolutionary government helped that figure drop significantly to three
percent. By 1965, 2.5 million people were engaged in the study of some
subject.
Castro
started his educational reforms at the grassroots level by training
teachers. One region where this was present was in Minas del Frio. This
eliminated the difficulty in finding teachers to teach in the mountain
regions of Cuba. This program was met with a great deal of success. The
Cuban government throughout the years graduated a significant number of
teachers.
1965: 1,000 teachers
1968: 4,000 teachers
1970-1980: 50,000 teachers
The training of
teachers, however, was not the only aspect of educational reform.
The
revolutionary government began a series of sweeping social reforms and
one of them was free education. A massive literacy campaign was designed
to educate all Cubans up to a sixth grade level. 1961 was marked as the
“Year of Education”. This helped Castro to transform and reshape Cuban
society. The program ran in this manner:
1.
All youths from ages 12-18
were relieved of their own school work.
2.
These youths were then
sent to the countryside to educate illiterates of all ages, colors, and
sexes.
The
education of females was also a primary concern for the Cuban
revolutionary government. In fact, it was a landmark revolutionary
development for Latin America as a whole. In 1962, half of the students
at Havana University were female.
The Cuban government also established Schools of Revolutionary
Instruction. These schools educated men and women. These students that
have graduated from the revolutionary schools now form the basis of the
Cuban government, industry, military, farms, factories, and
professionals.
