The Cuban Revolutionary Offensive in Education

‘La Lenin is my passport’: schooling, mobility and belonging in socialist Cuba and its diaspora

“…After the revolution, the government nationalised all schools, made primary education free and universal, reorganised secondary and higher education, and initiated its extraordinary literacy campaign with the aim of extending literacy to all Cubans across the country (Leiner 1984;Read 1970;Álvarez Figueroa 1997). 2 Illustrative of the modernist zeal of the revolution and the desire to break with the legacy of private, religious education, schools were to prioritise the sciences and technical skills.…”

“…Lenin School was founded in Havana in 1972. As the name suggests, it was modelled on the Soviet education system, but also inspired by Maoism and the Cuban nationalist hero José Martí's ideals of breaking down the barriers between manual and intellectual labour (Cheng and Manning 2003;Read 1970). La Lenin was meant to be a 'new kind of school', which would, in Castro's words, serve as a 'vanguard' for other schools in a future socialist Cuba (see Wald 1978, 361;Granma 1974, 5), and similar elite schools were opened in Cuba's other provinces.…”

The pedagogy of Ernesto Che Guevara

“…Most of it, however, is about Che's political and military theories and generally does not consider these from a pedagogical perspective. Moreover, the unfortunately little amount of literature in English on Cuban education generally neglects Che's contribution to pedagogy (Jolly 1964, Read 1970, Bowles 1971, Wald 1978, Berube 1984, MacDonald 1985, Fitzgerald 1990, Lutjens 1997, McDonald 2000, Carnoy 2007). There are, however, a few scholars who have written on Che specifically from a pedagogical perspective (Gillette 1972, Senaro and Brown 1973, McLaren 2000, or, if not directly from a pedagogical perspective, at least from an understanding of the pedagogical aspects of social change (see Löwy 1973, Judson 1984.…”