the primary grades that will provide free clothing, lunch, and dinner.

The cost, of course, is staggering. Examining the Cuban investment in boarding-school education, economists estimate that the cost of maintaining a boarding school child is ten to fifteen times greater than for the education of a day-school youngster.

Boarding school students are thought to be the first generation in the development of the New Cuban Man. According to the educational rhetoric, these schools offer children a chance to live together and develop attitudes in line with Cuba's revolutionary and educational goals. In addition, boarding schools give youngsters from isolated rural areas opportunities they would otherwise never have had to develop skills in the arts, sciences, and technical subjects in urban centers. On the other hand, those boarding schools built in the countryside became the focus of reconstructed towns, which consist of a polyclinic, social center, and new housing for the campesinos,

Like the boarding-school movement, carly childhood education receives great attention and funds. But unlike our nursery schools, Cuba's circulos infantiles often admit babies as young as forty-five days old and include children through kindergarten, or age five. Most of the nurseries I visited, however, had few children under a year. Run by the Federation of Cuban Women, they have an enrollment of more than 44,000 children. The principal objectives of these facilities are the liber. ation of mothers so that they, too, can become members of the country's much-needed working force, and the first steps in the development of an educated people. These nurseries stress health care, provide three nutritionally balanced meals a day, and are inordinately concerned with cleanliness. At monthly meetings with parents, the schools again concentrate on hygiene, nutrition, prevention of illness, and child-development problems. Initially, the nurseries provided little more than soap and water and three square meals a day, but, in a process of change, these programs now place greater focus on guided activities for play, language skills, music, and art.

Exerting greater influence on the nursery schools and other educational programs in Cuba are young members of the educational psychology division of the ministry who work closely with curriculum, develop new plans, and huid early childhood seminars to guide nursery schools in understanding infant and child development. Stressing the capacity of young children for learning and the crucial ingredient of adult love meny of these young scholars are tunatets familiar with Piaget,

Erikson, and Bruner, among others. They, and large numbers of other educators, go abroad to visit and live in foreign countries to learn the details of modern programs in other socialist countries and in Western Europe. The thrust is to develop appropriate curriculums for Cuba consistent with contemporary psychological thought.

The foundation of Cuban education draws not only upon inodern psychological theory, however. The goals of Cuban education are intimately connected with the Revolution and the Cuban view of Marxism. Not that communist doctrine paints each classroom red, but much indeed is made of Cuban ideology and conciencia-or what one sociologist defines as "an amalgam of consciousness, conscience, conscientiousness, and commitment."

Castro's July 26, 1968, speech outlined the key points of Cuba's communist structure, and provides a rather clear understanding of what this pattern means for Cuba's schools. In part, it reads:

In a communist society, man will have succeeded in achieving just as much understanding, closeness, and brotherhood as he has on occasion achieved within the narrow circle of his own family. To live in a communist society is to live without selfishness, to live among the people and with the people, as if every one of our fellow citizens were really our dearest brother....

People aspiring to live under communism must do what we are doing. They must emerge from underdevelopment; they must develop their forces

of production; they must master technology in order to turn man's efforts and man's sweat into the miracle of producing practically unlimited quantities of material goods. If we de not master technology, if we do not develop our forces of production, we shall deserve to be called dreamers for aspiring to live in a communist society.

And above all we should not use money or wealth to create consciousness. We must use consciousness to create wealth. To offer a man more than is expected is to buy his consciousness with money.... As we said before, communism certainly cannot be established if we do not create abundant wealth. But the way to do this, in our opinion, is not by creating consciousness through money or wealth but by creating wealth through consciousness.

To quote Ronald Steel again: "It is a noble theory. Whether it will work in practice remains to be-seen. The Cubans have made remarkable strides ... and furnish one of the few examples in Latin America of a society that is actually achieving the social reforms that others talk about in the meetings of the Alliance for Progress."

According to Castro-and, in turn, the Cuban ideology-the old society, motivated by money and a fear of poverty, is on the way out, to be replaced by the New Cuban Man, who will work for the common good. To achieve this goal, he will sacrifice and he will work with dedication. Out of altruism will spring a spirit of cooperation and bu

manity. That the Cubans do sacrifice is undeniable; the long queues waiting what seems endlessly for goods and food on ration attest to this. That they work with dedication is also clear despite moments of frustration caused by petty bureaucrats who say yes and bury approved forms under a pile of other requests never acted upon.

To find out how official ideology affects the classroom, I posed open-ended questions to a variety of students in all parts of Cuba. In the upper grades, I instructed teachers simply to ask the children to write a composition on the theme "If I Had Five Wishes." I cautioned teachers to refrain from prejudicing their classes, by offering examples, even if students asked for more details on the assignment. The following is from a fifth-grader in the mountains of Oriente:

My wishes are that my country will continue being free as it is and also that it will come out of underdevelopment.

I also wish that the people of Vietnam will gain their complete liberty so that our Vietnamese brothers will be free and happy.

I also wish that our center will be the best, maintaining the strictest discipline, studying and working better each day. Before anything else, I wish to get excellent marks at the end of the semester.

Besides all of that, I wish that our country will be able to complete the plan goal, that is, to complete the ten million tons of sugar for 1970.

With only slight variations, the compositions included four themes in common: study, achievement of national goals, the international political situation, and Vietnam. Comments on study were often combined with personal goals, such as the wish to become a teacher or an engineer. As for Cuban achievement, they were concerned then with harvesting ten million tons of sugar and, in Oriente particularly, with an additional two million tons of coffee. The international references, when they were not to Vietnam, were to hopes for freedom for people in other parts of Latin America and Asia. Vietnam was on every child's mind. The wish for peace in that tortured and far-off land was in every composi tion. If any nation is glorified by official propaganda, it is North Vietnam and its ally, the National Liberation Front.

Here are typical selections from Makarenko Institute students, teenagers in the primary school teacher training program, in answer to another „open-ended writing assignnient asking children to describe what they thought

their life and work would be like at age thirty:

My life and work at age thirty would seem better. Why? I've already finished school and I would be teaching in the Institute or I'll go to the province where I'm appointed. I will teach those children who don't know. I will serve the Revolution wherever necessary.

My work will be even better. I will help my country in its development even more. My parents, seeing the success I've had with my studies, feel proud and advise me to continue, since they couldn't study with the same ease with which children now go to the Revolutionary Government Schools. These schools didn't exist before, especially in the rural areas; now all children, whites as well as blacks, have the same rights to study and improve themselves. At thirty years of age there will be teachers in Cuba who are capable of going to other countries to teach those children who don't know-underdeveloped countries which don't even know what schools are. I am sixteen years old and in the third year of the Institute.

My father is a dock worker and my mother is a housewife. Both my mother and father completed the sixth grade.

My dream is like a gift, a morning star which will tell me what will happen when I'm thirty. In my present life I'm eighteen years old; in future years I aspire to get married as all women, to have kids, and a happy home, simple but peaceful.

I also aspire to work with children, each time to teach more about life, to emphasize with my example morals, ethics, love for our country, that it is necessary to die for a just cause as Che did, and as I will do if it is necessary.

Repeatedly in these compositions, the themes of sacrifice and commit. ment came through clearly. "To go where the Revolution needs me" is one of the most frequent expressions.

When questioned about the obvious reflection of Cuban revolutionary ideology in the schools, Cuban educators never deny it. One leader, Abel Prieto Morales, at the ministry related an encounter at an educational conference in Italy, where someone asked him, "Is the school in Cuba an instrument of the state?" To which he readily responded: "Yes, of course. Just as it was before the triumph of the Revolution, and as it is in present-day Italy."

Here in the United States, we often do not see that the stories we tell our children in school about Washington's honesty and the cherry tree or poor little Lincoln's log cabin and his vora

cious appetite for books read by candlelight are tales with political content. When comparing schools as struments of the state, note the holy trinity of flag, Constitution, and our "way of life"

Cuba, as a nation, suffers greatly from the fact of underdevelopment. To nis credit, Castro-whether it makes good headlines or not-has once again recently made it clear to his people that he and they have a lot to learn before they make it as a modern nation. In education, they are hampered by insufficient and inadequate teachers, by rigid classrooms, and by schools where critical skills are not always emphasized. All this, together with the lack of adequate planning, frequent disorganization, and often unsatisfactory and limited materials, will be plaguing the Cuban educational sys tem for some time.

On the other hand, important steps for Cuba's future educational development are being taken row. New curriculums, programs, and materials are in the works. Universalization of education, participation of students and parents, the strengthening of teacher training, and the search for new educational models show signs of a brighter future. On the whole, the important barometric readings for a modern educational system in Cuba seem most positive.

In the long run, Cuba's joyful ap preciation of its children will probably be its single greatest asset. Children in Cuba are well cared for by any standard-well fed, well clothed, and, above all, intensively and expensively educated. Cuba is not shopping for bargains in the educational market place for its treasured children. While the queues for rice and meat wind their way around town, the children in the nursery schools sit down to a protein-rich breakfast.

Whether Castro's noble vision of the New Cuban Man will ever emerge is clearly not easily predictable. But if this remarkable experiment on a tiny island ever fails, it will not be for lack of attention to the education of its children.

L

ittle is generally known of the new social set-up in Cuba and particularly of the recent medical innovations. A new pattern of public health services has emerged. Gone are the days of private practice Rural hospitals have sprung up in remote areas of the country, doctors must serve in provinces and the entire active population has been enrolled to fight disease

In the first two years, the aftermath of the Revolution put a great strain on the medical services. Many doctors left the country. According to reliable sources, out of some 6,300 doctors, around half decided to expatriate themselves. Whatever the figure. Cuba lost a significant number of doctors, technicians, nurses and other health personnel. So the first thing to do was to replace them. To that end, the authorities initiated a very extensive and concentrated training programme. At present there is one doctor for every 1,100 inhabitants.

There are three medical schools, Havana, Santiago and Las Villas, which form most doctors and medical teachers. Dentists, technical assistants and nurses receive their training in various other schools. In all, at present, about 9,000 (den's and infor Tatang. For doctors, the course lasts se

years: for a fully trained nurse, three years, and for an auxiliary nurse, nine months As soon as doctors have graduated they must practise in a rural area or a provin cial hospital.

Young men or women begin their training with the clear understanding that in exchange for their free education they will have to serve in rural districts Eventually. if he wishes to become a specialist, a young doctor can further his studies. He can even obtain a scholarship to study abroad. WHO has been instrumental, in recent years, in promoting exchanges and granting scholarships. Several Cuban fellows have recently completed their studies in the United Kingdom. Czechoslovakia and various Latin American countries.

At present, practically the whole of the medical profession work for the Government, even those who were trained before 1958. There are still a few doctors in private practice but their number is dwindling.

Prevention first

The emphasis, both in theory and prac tice, is placed on preventive medicine. One doctor said: "We are not dogmatic, we use sini ersal surat fie precble The differ. ence between now and before is in the

attitude towards people. Today everything is free care, operations, medicine.

Tuition for students also and we work on the principle of prevention first."

Another doctor who works in the mountainous Oriente province explained: "Before the Revolution this region was one of the least developed in Cuba. No medicine. no public assistance, no social programmes existed in these mountainous areas. Now, in less than ten years and in this province alone, 30 new hospitals have been put up. 'We are trying to shape men of the future, devoid of self-seeking but with a sense of service and duty towards their fellow creatures in the world."

Just as the first phase of the Revolution put tremendous pressure on the medical personnel, the second phase made heavy demands for up-to-date equipment. Most of the available equipment, especially the X-ray installations used to come from the USA and this at one point caused a serious gap. Now, almost all the equipment comes from western and eastern Europe.

Cuba is administratively divided into eight provinces, each with a regional health office, except the provinces of Oriente and Hrona, which each have to The pro vinces themselves are sub-divided into

The Enrique Cabrera National Hospital in Havana provides medical care for 200,000 people. It is also a teaching hospital where doctors and nurses begin working while still studying, a form of on-the-job training. The hospital provides 526 beds and three kinds of services-for outside (visiting nurses), emergency and in patients. Of the 896 staff members 100 are doctors, 40 of them resident and training to become specialists and 60 are interns. There are 70 nurses, 90 auxiliary nurses and a school of nursing with 250 students who work in the hospital as part of their training.

The Enrique Cabrera is the main medical unit in the region and works in close cooperation with polyclinics. The region itself is divided into five sections and each of these has a polyclinic which gives primary medical assistance. Usually when a specialist's help is required the polyclinic patient is sent to the Enrique Cabrera in Havana. In 1966, before the polyclinics were established, the hospital treated 138,000 outpatients. The following year saw a great improvement, with the new polyclinics treating some 68,000 pa

naturally ensured better service for each individual case. The underlying idea remains that of bringing medical service nearer to the patient.

The cost per day to the hospital for an in-patient is estimated at $14 and the average length of stay is 8 days. All services for in patients are completely free, from the initial examination to the final operation. For out-patients all is free except for some medicines.

Rural hospitals

Only when one travels to the province of Oriente can these sweeping changes be fully appreciated. Here in Santiago, almost 600 miles by air from Havana, lies a difficult mountainous country where earlier people might have to journey 20 hours on horseback to get medical attention.

Forty seven rural hospitals have been built-thirty in Oriente alone. They are small, simple and efficient.

To reach the townlet of Mayari Arriba. forty-five miles north of Santiago, one has first to climb the tawny Sierra Maestra, a 7,000 feet mountain range overlooking the glittering Caribbean sea. Along the good

asphalt road, bougainvillea and hibiscus colour the landscape. The Emilio Barcenas Polyclinic in Mayari dates from 1961. It has 72 beds of which 42 are reserved for deliveries. Regulations decreed in 1966 make it compulsory for all women to come to hospital to give birth. This is being put into effect progressively. In the past, too many families employed local untrained midwives who practised witchcraft and often caused accidents.

Located in the peaceful tree-shaded village of Jarahueca, the Reinaldo Brooks Polyclinic is even more remote. It has 30 beds-10 for deliveries, 10 for children, 10 for general cases, and serves 10,000 people in an area of 100 square kilometers.

These figures pin-point the main preoccupations of the Cuban government. Priority goes to the health of child and mother using all available means. To implement this a nation-wide effort has been deployed to:

train general practitioners in obstetrics,
gynaecology and paediatrics
increase the number of clinics and beds
available for pregnant women
have eighty per cent of deliveries take
place in hospital by 1970 (less than
40% ten years ago)

- improve nutrition and dental care for mothers and children

stimulate breast feeding in the first three months of the infant's life. Various programmes have been initiated to combat diarrhoeal diseases, malnutrition, tuberculosis and birth injuries. Amendments to the legislation give greater protection to expectant mothers. Women have priority to buy, at special prices, certain food-stuffs, dresses and underwear. These bonuses are distributed to women at prenatal clinics over a period of several months in order to encourage regular attendance. Twenty per cent of the apartments in new blocks are awarded to couples expecting a child. Women cannot be refused employment because of pregnancy nor can they lose their job until the child is six months old. From the fourth month of pregnancy until four months after delivery, women do not have to work overtime or on night shift. Their salary is not cut if they are transferred to easier work To encourage breast feeding, nurse ing mothers she to hours Va, ia