Teacher Dismissed from Job for Reporting Fraud

Teacher Dismissed from Job for Reporting Fraud / Roberto Jesus Quinones
Haces
Posted on November 25, 2013

GUANTÁNAMO, Cuba, November, www.cubanet.org – Alain Lobaina Laseria is a
mathematics graduate and worked in the Pedro Agustín Pérez Basic
Secondary School in the municipality of El Salvador in Guantánamo.
However, he has been dismissed from his employment for reporting
failures and irregularities related to the education system.

When one teacher at the school went to complete a work mission to Haiti
and another transferred to a polytechnic, Alain, who until that point
had worked as a tutor, had to teach mathematics and physics to eighth
grade students. Upon receiving the groups he carried out an examination
to check the students' knowledge and the results were disastrous. In one
of the groups no one passed and in the other, from 72 students, only 7
passed.

As the course advanced Alain noticed that the students level of
knowledge was extremely low. After carrying out the second test in
mathematics, he failed 8 students because they had handed in their exam
papers almost completely blank. After reporting the results, the teacher
in charge of the grade carried out an analysis and threatened him,
saying that he could not fail those students. From that moment onwards
his situation in the school became very difficult.

Then he decided to write, under the protection of Article 63 of the
Constitution of the Republic, a letter to the government and the
municipal Party in which he reported the fraud that had been committed
in the school and how he had been pressured to pass 100 percent of the
students.

Furthermore, as a response to the public call to the highest levels of
government and the Party to combat corruption and all kinds of
violations, Alain reported other cases of fraud committed in Polytechnic
No. 2, in the San Justo neighbourhood, in the Vocational Computing
Polytechnic, in the Pre-University Vocational Institute of Exact
Sciences and in the educational centres of the city of Guantanamo.

Shortly after Alain sent his letter, the Provincial Director of
Education turned up at the school and read it in front of all the
workers. The purpose of discrediting him in front of his colleagues and
making an enemy of him was made clear through the following warnings:
"All of this school's workers can be involved in this….this letter
cannot be published in the Venceremos de Guatanamo Newspaper…and we will
not tolerate a Gorbachov here in El Salvador"

In the final test, Alain failed various students, being the only teacher
who didn't promote 100 percent of students. In the re-evaluation test he
caught a student copying the exam responses from a cheat sheet and
reported the incident to the school administration. However, all he
achieved was to have the school principal, Angel Velazquez, the
secretary of the Party named Leticia, the municipal education teacher
leader and the secretaries of the UJC (Young Communist Union) and the
trade union reprimand him as if he were the guilty one.

Although Alain was opposed to the fraudulent student sitting another
re-evaluation test, the aforementioned people agreed to allow it and
they never investigated to find out how, suspiciously, the boy obtained
the correct responses to the exam.

Upon starting this school semester, the principal of the school
cancelled Alain's work contract. All this has occurred after the Granma
Newspaper has repeatedly denounced academic fraud and the radio program
"Speaking Clearly" of Rebel Radio and the television program "The
Roundtable" have adopted similar positions.

Roberto Jesús Quiñones Haces

Cubanet, 19 November 2013

Translated by Peter W Davies

Source: "Teacher Dismissed from Job for Reporting Fraud / Roberto Jesus
Quinones Haces | Translating Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/teacher-dismissed-from-job-for-reporting-fraud-roberto-jesus-quinones-haces/