Wednesday, June 30, 2010 | |

Educating Cubans & Americans


In her June 26th blog (http://desdecuba.com/generationy/), Yoani Sanchez complains about the Cuban school system – inept school teachers; students faced with a series of standardized tests that are in such constant flux that it confuses students instead of aids in their learning; and Physical Education hours that are spent haphazardly. Sound familiar?

FCAT scores; the **** we pay our teachers, thereby ensuring that the best and the smartest are lost to other professions. As for PE – well, we’ve seen the size of our kids.

However, Yoani then adds a line about how it has become common practice for teens in Cuba to trade sex with their teachers for good grades. One would hope that, despite “grade inflation,” this kind of behavior does not actually exist in the States to the extent it seems to in Cuba. Perhaps it did once, before all those sexual harassment rules were added to student/faculty handbooks.

Regardless, she ends the blog like this:

“We cannot continue to be satisfied with the fact that at least while our children are sitting at a desk they are not roaming the streets at the mercy other risks. Within the walls of the classroom very serious vices can be developed, permanent ethical deformations, and an incubation of mediocrity of alarming proportions. No parent should remain silent about it.”

I’d say that’s pretty good advice for parents, even here in the grand ‘ol US of A.

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