Cuba opens a new school year

Education is the response to paradigms imposed by consumer societies

      More than 1,622,000 students returned to the classroom on September 4 in 18,800 educational institutions across the country.  In an opening ceremony attended by Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz, Cuban Minister of Education Naima Trujillo Barreto declared that the schools open their doors to children, adolescents, and youth with similar dreams and aspirations under conditions of equal guarantee for their realization.  She asserted that “education must always be an alternative to the paradigms imposed by the consumer societies, which conspire against human progress and life on the planet.” 

Minister of Education Naima Trujillo Barreto began her teaching career as a rural primary school teacher, following the example of her mother

      The Cuban daily newspaper Granma reported on the opening ceremonies in the various provinces of the country.  It also noted that from every corner of the nation, there was an avalanche of photos in the social media of children dressed in their school uniforms, confirming the enthusiasm of Cuban families for the beginning of a new school year.  

     With the opening of 2023-2024 school year, the Cuban educational system returns to its calendar of forty-six weeks of instruction with full in-school presence, following a period of adaptations to the COVID-19 pandemic.  A Cuban journalist writes that the return to the classroom means a return to the things that mark your life forever: seeing the faces of friends and teachers, touching hands at the table, touching your books and pencils, writing on the blackboard the new calculation to be learned, and hearing the sound of the classroom bell.

The Cuban custom is that parents accompany children to the nieghbothood school

The opening ceremony in Havana

A free subscription option is available, with capacity to read, send, and share all posts. A paid subscription ($5 per month or $40 per year) enables you to make comments and to support the costs of the column; paid subscribers also receive a free PDF copy of my book on Cuba and the world-system.  Ten percent of income generated through subscriptions to the column is donated to the Cuban Philosophical Society.