By: Santiago Romero
The 2023-24 School Year- The early morning of today, Monday, lasted shortly for Claudia Moniet in the face of the expectations –the same for many- for the beginning of the school year 2023-2024 in the province of Santiago de Cuba; it happened as always, the hustle and bustle of parents facing the major shortages of today; the preparation of the backpack, transportation, the rearrangement of the schedule of each family member and the challenge before a new level of education that begins.
And luckily for Claudia and her classmates in the twelfth grade of the Rafael Maria de Mendive senior high school, the reception changed everything, because parents, teachers and service workers flooded with joy the small square of the former high school where Fidel studied, on Reloj Street around the Dolores Park.
The same happened in the nine municipalities of the province, both in the hills and in the cities.
It happens that in this province with more mountains than plains, the school year is also a priority, as a celebration of thought, unity and resistance to the blockade.
When you see the respect and care that entails the school in rural villages it means that dignity and decorum have not emigrated; much less that love, attachment to the local, to the identity that magnifies us in another school year of 46 weeks that seeks regularity as before the pandemic.
Three hours away from Santiago de Cuba, in the town of Uvero, as in La Plata, the celebration shows a proud country, knowing that all our dreams, joys and sorrows, longings and challenges go through Education, that is why, in Baraguá, Mella municipality, the celebration of the beginning of this school year was focused on the thought of Maceo, without forgetting Marti as it happened in the opening of the classrooms in Majaguabo in San Luis and in the Cauto plain, in Palma Soriano.
It is easy to say, but let us reflect on how it is possible that Cuba, under siege, starts the school year with a big party where more than 1 622 000 students from around 10 800 educational centers throughout the country participate, in conditions of material shortages due to the blockade, however, the reality is alien to horrifying figures such as: the sixty percent increase in the number of youth suicides in the U.S. in the last decade; crimes in schools or the diving educational distress, to name a few issues that cast a shadow over teaching in North America.
If the dawn of today’s Monday was short-lived for young Claudia Moniet, the next one will be more ephemeral before new ones in the 2023-2024 school year in the province of Santiago de Cuba; she verified that most of her friends are still together, that the school is more beautiful and it was worth taking care of the shoes, the skirt even the backpack of the previous year, because the Little Prince reiterates it: the most important thing is invisible, hence, that laughing, studying, making more friends and joining the next contest is comforting… and that is incalculable… Daydreaming! .,
.It is easy to say, but let us reflect on how it is possible for Cuba, under siege, to start the school year with a big party in which more than 1 622 000 students from around 10 800 educational centers throughout the country participate, in conditions of material shortages due to the blockade. Photo: Santiago Romero.
Bankarization in Santiago de Cuba 2023
