The new school year with full classrooms, few teachers and empty backpacks starts in Cuba

Havana/The beginning of the school year in Cuba, this Monday, was far from the epic that state media repeat, between promises of “party” and “commitment.” While the official acts and triumphalist speeches multiplied on television, in Sancti Spíritus a grandmother had to sell the metformin with which she controls her diabetes to buy books from her grandson. The child’s mother, who lives abroad, did not yet send the package with the tools, and the old woman chose to change her health for school materials.

It is just one of the stories that has compiled 14ymedio About the beginning of the classes. In Holguín, the driver of a private taxi tells the experience of a passenger he transported this morning and moved from Buenaventura. “He did not allow his son to give the first classes in Alberto Sosa high school. It was enough to see the panorama,” says the holguinero. “Before the lack of teachers, the indisciplines without anyone being able to control them, the disorganization and the rumors of drugs in the surroundings, preferred to return it to their people before leaving it in that school.”

The problem of drug use also lurks the José Miró Argenter high school, on the Holguinera periphery. “Some parents have come to pay between 10,000 and 15,000 pesos to get their children to be transferred to more central schools and, supposedly, safer,” adds the taxi driver.

The Government had declared this beginning of the course as “highest priority”, in the words of Miguel Díaz-Canel, although the president was not present because he is in a Tour through Asia. The Minister of Education, Naima Trujillo, filled the void with figures: more than one and a half million students returned to the classrooms this September 1. It was necessary to bury the image of the previous course, marked by the rebellion of the university students against the Etecsa tariff.

Behind the official choreography, the country shows a bleak panorama. Dozens of schools have been closed by their deterioration and the classrooms are saturated by lack of teachers. The speech is full of euphemisms such as “insurance” and “resource optimization.” But on the street, the most repeated phrase is another: “lack of everything.”

The lack of uniforms was evident from this first day. In the photos taken by the reporters of 14ymedio Students dressed in informal clothes abound, including jeans of the empire, until recently prohibited in educational centers. Even in the official cartoons, humorous allusions were sorry for the problem. In state stores, many families did not find the sizes they needed, and on the black market a single garment is sold for a price that very few can pay. Some parents turned to barter, exchanging shirts and blouses. Once again, the help of relatives abroad again was the salvation table.

A state employee from Sancti Spíritus summarizes the paradox: “It is cheaper to buy useful in Spain and send them, to get them in Cuba.” And with shoes the drama is even greater. A mother disbursed the equivalent of more than two months of salary, about 13,000 pesos, for basic shoes.

To the scarcity is added the wake up. Parents and teachers agree that the blackouts affect rest and learning. From Camagüey an electric cut is reported from two in the morning, just before the opening ceremony. A mother described on Facebook the irony of listening to school speech about a “better future” after spending the night in Vela. “My daughter already knows how the issue is,” he wrote on his Facebook wall.

In the school courtyards, decorated in some cases with Venezuelan flags that had little to do with the occasion – as in the primary and secondary school José Luis ruined again, in Havana -, the parents looked with distrust of the few materials delivered. They describe two pencils, bad photocopied notebooks and old books that many recognized as the same ones that they used in their childhood.

The scarcity of teachers, however, is the greatest obstacle. In Camagüey, 19 schools did not open their doors; In Holguin there is talk of “zoning”, a technical term that in practice means puddled students and longer paths. The few teachers who resist must accept partial contracts, divide shifts and face saturated classrooms. Two decades ago the government presumed an “ideal” of 20 students per classroom and up to two teachers in some degrees. That reform evaporated, and today’s classrooms are inflated as balloons about to explode.

In Camagüey, 19 schools did not open their doors, and in Holguin there is talk of “zoning”

The ruling party speaks of “creativity”, but for families that word implies sewing used uniforms, improvising backpacks, getting desks on your own. For teachers, it means recycling notebooks, dictating notes instead of using books, photocopiating guides with money from pocket.

The opening ceremony on Monday ended with the usual script. A ceremony that tried to disguise what is actually nostalgia. Parents know that the real test begins the next day, when the pencil is missing, when the teacher does not reach everyone and when the notebook ends before November.