EDUCATION IN PRE-REVOLUTIONARY CUBA
Child labor
and exploitation
Shinning shoes Working
Various
indices in yesterday's Cuba ( before 1959 ) showed a disturbing
pattern of social as well as economic poverty. The ideals of education, as
expressed over a century ago by Jose Marti - Cuban writer-poet and national hero
- when he said to be educated is to be free, was far from being realized at that
time.
Although Cuba's illiteracy rate of only 23.6% which placed it 4th in Latin America, behind Argentina, Chile and Costa Rica looked good, it really didn't show the whole picture.
Other educational indices such as school enrollment and avg. educational grade obtained lagged behind many Latin American countries and showed a more depressing picture. A good of example of how bad the educational system was is reflected in the fact that Cuba's school enrollment which was only 51.6% placed it 12th in Latin America. Another indicator that showed the educational poverty in Cuba is demonstrated by the fact the percentage of those with a third grade education or less was a whopping 60.4 with an astounding 80% of the the rural population having a third grade or less level of education. This means in simple terms that over 60% of the population was semiliterate, what some call functional illiterates; that is those having the minimal skills to function in a society.
Another indicator that showed how poorly the educational system and the society was functioning, is demonstrated by the extremely low percentage of high school/vocational graduates, as nationally only 3.5% got to finish their education.
At that time there were approximately 25 thousand teachers without a job and approximately 250 thousand children without schools.
The very few universities that existed in Havana were exclusively for the affluent. The fact that it was out of the reach of the average Cuban is reflected in the fact that nationally only 1.1% of the population graduated from a university.
Blacks were for the most part shut off from schools of higher learning due to inherent injustices in the system. A variety of factors such as racism and poverty made it virtually impossible for black Cubans to obtain any kind of educational success. Statistically speaking black high school and college graduates was minimal with less than .05% obtaining a high school or college degree.
Source: 1953 Census of the Republic of Cuba