The idea of combining study with work in high schools looked very good
on paper. It had the air of an immortal future in the office where they
turned it into a ministerial order. But reality, stubborn as always, had
its own interpretation of the schools in the countryside. The "clay"
meant to be formed in the love of the furrow, was made up of adolescents
far away--for the first time--from parental control, who found housing
conditions and food very different from their expectations.
I, who should have been the "new man" and who barely could have become a
"good man", was trained in one of these schools in the Havana
municipality of Alquizar. I was fourteen and left with a corneal
infection, a liver deficiency and the toughness that is acquired when
one has seen too much. When matriculating, I still believed the stories
of work-study; at leaving, I knew that many of my fellow students had
had to exchange sex for good grades or show superior performance in
agricultural production. The small lettuce plants I weeded every
afternoon had their counterpart in a hostel where the priorities were
bullying, lack of respect for privacy and the harsh law of survival of
the fittest.
It was precisely one of those afternoons, after three days without water
and with the repetitive menu of rice and cabbage, that I swore to myself
that my children would never go to a high school in the country. I did
this with the unsentimental adolescent realism that, in those years,
calms us and leaves us knowing the impossibility of fulfilling certain
promises. So I accustomed myself to the idea of having to load bags of
food for my son Teo when he was away at school, of hearing that they
stole his shoes, they threatened him in the shower or that one of the
bigger ones took his food. All these images, that I had lived, returned
when I thought about the boarding schools.
Fortunately, the experiment seems to be ending. The lack of
productivity, the spread of diseases, the damage to ethical values and
the low academic standards have discredited this method of education.
After years of financial losses, with the students consuming more than
they manage to extract from the land, our authorities have become
convinced that the best place for a young person is at the side of his
parents. They have announced the coming end of the schools but without
the public apologies to those of us who were guinea pigs for an
experiment that failed; to those of us who left our dreams and our
health in the high schools in the country.
Yoani Sanchez: Cuba Ends A Long Experiment In Indoctrinating Youth At
Boarding Schools (24 July 2009)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yoani-sanchez/cuba-ends-a-long-experime_b_244084.html
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