By: Santiago Romero Chang
Translated by MSc. Guillermo Rodriguez Cortes
In the first three weeks of the current school year 2023-2024, the Carlos García Boarding School registers advances amidst lack of resources imposed by the blockade, a hostile policy that cannot annul the initiatives of teachers and other members of staff, for the sake of the relocation of the center among the best in the educational teaching work.
Odelsis Matos, BA in Primary Education, told tvsantiago of the rising results of the “Carlos Garcia” boarding school which she has been directing for five years now.
This 45-year-old center occupies an extensive area of 0.04 h (0.09 a), of which 0.02 hectares are arable land and used by the school garden for self-consumption of this boarding school. Cassava, sweet potato, pumpkin, oregano, coriander and mint, little by little, distinguish the furrows.
Here the staff is connected every day in the support to the parents in the face of the major shortages of today; the hustle and bustle in the preparation of the backpack, the transportation, the rearrangement of the school, today with 493 students plus twenty children in the «Casita Infantil» (the school day care center), the new modality of nursery to assimilate the youngest ones and the consequent support to the working mothers.
Parents, teachers and service workers fill the main square with joy, even relatives ask about the new changes in the parents’ meeting, because here the priority is the School Council with one delegate per classroom and the formal exchanges are every fifteen days, although -daily- there is coordination, «the social work and the concern never rest: why a certain student was late, in what conditions he lives, what happens at home, did he study or not, in short…»
The work of psychopedagogy does not only go hand in hand with the specialist, it involves all teachers, service workers, parents and representatives of the immediate community.
In spite of the domestic hustles and bustles and a more complicated family economy, the classes – free in Cuba – do not fail. The projection of the “Carlos Garcia” Versalles boarding school in contests, seminars, and sports competitions is outstanding.
For example, today it displays Gold and Silver Medals in English contests and recognitions for the results in key subjects such as History, Mathematics, Civic Education and Spanish Language, but the best prize will be in the results of the psycho-pedagogical work; the results from theory to practice of the new Family Code, extended over the subjects of History of Cuba, Civic Education and The World We Live In.
National Symbols Law: in Santiago de Cuba (I)
Marti in Cuba Now
Translator: MSc. Guillermo Rodriguez Cortes
And today, in an extremely defiantly and challenging context, in which the country is fighting a battle for life, resolutely facing the terrible pandemic, while implementing its strategy of economic and social development, which strengthens the Socialist Revolution; all this in the midst of a growing hostility of the U.S. Government whose policy is none other than to overthrow our revolutionary process undermining the most genuine ideological and cultural foundations of the Cuban nation.
At this time we live in, we still need Marti. To hold on to his thought is an essential pillar, not only to resist the imperialist and neoliberal attacks, to resist the attempts of capitalist reinstatement in Cuba, to defend our culture and identity; but also to continue forming patriots, citizens with critical capacity, true revolutionaries.
Last operations of the Rebel Army
Marti is very necessary for us in the defense of the Homeland; hence, as he always did, who was always at the helm under the storm; today it is necessary that we also sail at the helm. Marti is a reference for our revolutionary praxis; he is an expression of our entire character, of our condition as Cubans.
Marti continues to be the spiritual guide of the nation, the compass of the heroic creation that has meant the Revolution and Socialism in Cuba. We turn to him, as Mella and Fidel did, looking for political, ethical and cultural support. How can we explain that he was the intellectual author of the Moncada attack? The best definition of the Apostle of Independence was given by Fidel himself:
«(…) For us Cubans, Marti is the idea of the good that he described. Those of us who, on July 26, 1953, resumed the struggle for independence, begun on October 10, 1868, precisely on the one hundredth anniversary of Marti’s birth, had received from him, above all, the ethical principles without which a revolution cannot even be conceived. From him we also received his inspiring patriotism and such a high concept of honor and human dignity as no one in the world could have taught us».
