Cuban Education between Revolution and Reform

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.6.2.0205
• Pages: 205-221
• Published date: 01 December 2014
• Date: 01 December 2014
• Author: Danay Quintana Nedelcu
• Subject Matter: state change,reform,public policy,university education,values,ideology

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CUBAN EDUCATION BETWEEN REVOLUTION

AND REFORM

Danay Quintana Nedelcu*

FLACSO-México, México

Abstract

In recent years, Cuba has been immersed in a process of profound change. Among these

changes, one that has been less addressed by specialists both inside and outside the island

is ‘education reform’, specif‌ically at the university level. The relevance of this study is to

understand the current university education policy as the one that has perhaps the most

political content, the analysis of which would help to understand the challenges in political

and ideological matters faced by the government of Cuba today. Therefore, the present

work makes a critical assessment of the Cuban educational model based on values as a

central focus of university policy and its relevance in the transcendental process of change

happening in Cuba today. For students of public policy, the Cuban case encapsulates an

important singularity that allows the possibility of analysing short-term versus long-term

assessments of public problems (Ascher 2009). It also allows us to learn about social and

policy challenges in a country that has achieved universal mass, free and quality education

that has been able to extend itself beyond the capital (Mészarós 2008). What happens

next? A ref‌lection on the role of education in a changing society is one of the main purposes

of this work.

Keywords: state change, reform, public policy, university education, values, ideology

Introduction

A ref‌lection on the challenges facing public universities leads us to a theme

(among many) of the centrality of the social sciences: how far should the

state be, desired to be or actually be responsible for education in a country?

Can direct government involvement produce favourable results in solving the

educational problem? The analysis of the role of education cannot be done

without a ref‌lection about the State, the development models that are driven

by this structure, the power groups that give it meaning, the kind of society

that results and a holistic view of public policies (Del Castillo 2014) that serves

as a tool (in a double sense) of governments to solve public problems that they

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206 ACADEMIC ARTICLE  DANAY QUINTANA NEDELCU

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themselves have def‌ined in a (desired) dialogue with society. Just as it is essential

to understand the State to analyse education, education also ‘talks’ about the

kind of state and society in which it occurs.

Education as a public issue is an idea as old as ancient Greece. Since then the

state has been def‌ined as the entity that is ultimately responsible for the formation

of the citizens in the polis: the meaning of the State is, in its superior essence, the

Paideia1 (Werner 1971). From this statement we return to the political status of

(public) education.

The debates on education as a public issue have transcended the f‌ield of

research. They also exceed domestic politics, standing on the top of the global

agenda. Today we f‌ind tensions between the models proposed by governments

(pressured by international organisations) and those desired by society which

have led to a climate of direct confrontation. We see examples of this everywhere:

in the US and its most recent reform of the public school system, the education

reforms passed in Mexico, the protests in the university student movement of

Chile, the strike of teachers in Brazil, controversial university reform in Ecuador

in recent years and the university student movement unleashed in Colombia in

2011 are a few of the f‌lashpoints that demonstrate the social dynamics around

the problems facing the education sector in general and universities in particular.

The consequences of the neoliberal educational model (Gentili 1996;

Puiggrós 1996) have challenged the assumed direct link between education

and development, although the World Bank insists on it (Banco Mundial 2012)

and unresolved social problems in the Latin American region such as poverty,

inequality and inequity (Blanco, 2012; Gajardo 2012) only serve to trigger deep

crises in the current paradigms of the social function of education and what it

implies: the confrontation between reality and utopia.

Immersed in this scenario, the Cuban case is symptomatic of a different situation,

though not without its own tensions. In recent years, the government and Cuban

society have been involved in a major process of change: according to many, the

most important in the last 50 years. The changes are projected in the Guidelines

of the Economic and Social Policy of the Party and the Revolution (adopted at

the Sixth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba 2011 and ratif‌ied by the

National Assembly of Popular Power in the same year) and include new directions

for the economy, labour policies, taxation, immigration and education, among

others. They are an expression of a macro-policy discourse that presents us with

the aim of streamlining the national economy, in the interests of improving the

Cuban socialist system, by making it prosperous and sustainable. According to

the government, we are facing an updating of the economic model, but without

political changes,2 so that the two main axes of the current reforms are aimed,

f‌irst, to implement measures aimed at improving national economic eff‌iciency

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