NN42, June 2009
A Safari Towards Aid Effectiveness?
Cuba?s Policy of Internationalism in Education: A Social Justice Approach to Educational Aid and Collaboration
By Anne Hickling Hudson, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Email: a.hudson@qut.edu.auKeywords
Cuban education aid
Summary
This piece notes some of the types of international educational projects in which Cuba is engaged with other developing countries, and the solidarity principles underlying this aid. The author suggests that wealthy countries could perhaps provide more effective assistance in education if they were to consider the Cuban model of internationalism, and adopt some of its practices.
While building a strong education system, Cuba has also had over four decades of experience in internationalising education by assisting other developing countries. Cuban internationalism in education is hardly known at all by people in rich countries. Yet, it is extensive, and has continued to flourish despite the difficulties caused by the 1989 collapse of its former trading partners in the Eastern bloc, and the continuing economically devastating effects of the US economic blockade.
The following list indicates the types of international educational projects in which Cuba is engaged with other developing countries
? Provision of full scholarships to tertiary level students
Between 1965 ? 1995 Cuba provided 114 countries with 32,067 of these scholarships, of which 9,944 were taken up at Cuban universities and 22,123 at Cuban vocational institutes (see Hickling-Hudson 2000). From 1980 to the early 1990s, nearly a thousand teachers from Zimbabwe were trained in Maths and Science in Cuba?s Isle of Youth, studying in a Pedagogical Institute affiliated with the University of Havana. In the mid 1990s the Institute was still providing scholarships not only to Zimbabweans, but also to Angolans and Namibians (Zeigler 1995: 27). Thousands of tertiary level scholarships are still being provided, especially in the health sciences and engineering. In 2004, some 13,705 students from other countries were studying in Cuba (Unesco 2006). Most students are from modest or impoverished backgrounds in their own countries, and would be unable to go to university without this scholarship. Students are trained for tackling development problems, and many commit to offer their services mainly in the most remote and socioeconomically deprived regions of their home countries once they return. The intention of the Cuban government is to use education as a means of managing socio-economic inequalities to support the development process (see Lehr 2008).
? Provision of scholarships to young students to study in Cuban primary & secondary schools
Between 1978 and the early 1990s Cuba provided primary and secondary schooling to some 18,000 students from 37 nations. Cuban teachers taught the African students Mathematics, the Sciences, Spanish and vocational skills, while visiting African teachers paid by the Cuban government taught them their own languages and the geography, history and literature of their home countries. Cuba thus carried out its aim of helping students maintain their home cultures while at the same time benefiting from Cuba?s strengths in science, mathematics and vocational teaching (see Lehr 2008a).
? Provision of requested school infrastructure (buildings, classrooms)
? Contribution to school and university teaching
Between 1973 and 1985, some 22,000 Cuban teachers went to teach abroad, mainly in African countries. Cuban teachers continue today to teach overseas in universities, colleges, and schools, including schools in several countries of the Caribbean where they are helping to fill serious gaps in Mathematics and Science (see Hickling-Hudson 2004).
? Contribution to Adult Literacy and Continuing Education campaigns
Cuban adult educators have taught overseas in adult literacy programs in many countries. The latest approach is a train-the-trainer one in which Cubans train local educators to deliver systematically a Cuban-designed literacy method in the local language. Cuba is implementing literacy programs in Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, México, Argentina, Guatemala, Haití, Belize, Nicaragua, Ethiopia, and Cape Verde. Each program is negotiated with the country?s government.
? Contributing to the education of doctors overseas.
Cuban doctors are teaching medical students overseas by means of televised classes and hands-on instruction in local polyclinics (Venezuela, currently)
? Assistance with curriculum development in Spanish speaking countries (eg. Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia)
? Sector development and collaboration in programs, e.g. Special Education, Early Childhood Education, Sports and Physical Education
? Collaboration and training in university policy development and administration (Colombia)
Solidarity principles underlying Cuba?s internationalist policy
What Cubans describe as ?solidarity? principles characterise the internationalist cooperation agreements that Cuba shares with numerous countries. Some of them are very different from principles underlying aid given by rich to poorer countries, as the following list might suggest:
- Absolute respect for the national sovereignty and self-determination of the countries involved.
- No conditionalities, no ?tied? aid
- Agreements take account of the different economic levels of each country, so that countries can help each other on the basis of solidarity rather than following only the rules of the market. [In education, this means that a cost-sharing principle that includes paying local salaries to Cuban educators is worked out with countries that can afford it, while the poorest countries are given Cuban assistance for little or no cost.]
- A variety of approaches to bilateral financing are identified
- The joining of a third party is admitted if this party agrees with the general solidarity principles. [The third party could be, for example, UNESCO, UNICEF, the UNDP, or it could be another country.]
- Technologies and knowledge are transferred without ?intellectual property? cost to poor countries in need of them, on the basis that knowledge is the patrimony of humanity, and not private property for profit. [This means, for example, that the Cuban-designed adult literacy materials and approaches to medical training are shared, not sold.]
A justice-based model: tackling the educational crisis
The OECD?s Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (March 2005) saw a process of collaboration between donor countries and impoverished countries receiving educational aid. They articulated goals for an improved approach to aid that would make it more effective. A recent survey (OECD 2006) has found some progress towards these goals, but far from enough to make a dent in the crippling problems of the inadequate and flawed educational models inherited from colonial times, which continue to be entrenched across the globe (see Hickling-Hudson, Corona-Gonzalez and Martin-Sabina 2006). It is this situation that makes it imperative for all nations to consider different approaches to educational assistance and exchange.
Cuba is a poor country, population 11.5 million, with a per capita income about the same as that of Jamaica (around $3,000), yet it has the vision, political will and organisational skills to have managed since the 1960s a massive, flexible and targeted global cooperation programme in education as well as in other fields such as health and engineering. Nearly all of the international education programmes listed above continue today to benefit substantial numbers, although some are on a reduced scale compared to the past when Cuba?s economy was more securely within a framework assisted by Eastern Bloc countries. The only one discontinued is the big programme of international primary and secondary schools on the Isle of Youth, which educated thousands of children, mainly from Africa, in the 1970s and 1980s. Some of the largest international cooperation programmes that Cuba currently manages are in Venezuela. There, under the ALBA cooperation agreements negotiated in 2004 with President Hugo Chavez, Cuba is providing Venezuela the assistance of thousands of doctors, teachers, education planners, engineers and other professionals, while Venezuela provides Cuba with significant supplies of oil and advice in the development of its energy sector.
It is unfortunate that Cuba?s international cooperation in education has not been comprehensively evaluated, and this needs to be done, but scores of countries, nevertheless, continue to seek Cuban collaboration. Even the limited research in this field suggests to me that wealthy countries could perhaps provide more effective assistance in education if they were to consider the Cuban model of internationalism, and adopt some of its practices. As Lehr points out (2008b) ?In spite of the international development community?s efforts to raise basic education levels in low-income societies, the socio-economic divide is not narrowing. It is worth examining global justice-based educational models?..that can work in conjunction with other educational measures aimed at strengthening the capacity of the most vulnerable and socially excluded segments of society".
References
Hickling-Hudson, Anne (2000) The Cuban University and Educational Outreach: Cuba?s Contribution to Post-Colonial Development. In B. Teasdale and Z. MaRhea (Eds.) Local Knowledge and Wisdom in Higher Education. Pergamon.
Hickling-Hudson, Anne (2004) ?South-South collaboration: Cuban teachers in Jamaica and Namibia?. Comparative Education, Vol. 40 No 2, May, pp. 289 - 311.
Hickling-Hudson, Anne, Jorge Corona Gonzalez, Elvira Martin-Sabina (2006) ?Education in newly independent countries: Problematic models and the significance of the Cuban alternative?. Journal of Development Studies (Journal Fur Entwicklungspolitik, Austria) Vol. 22 No. 4, pp. 96-125.
Lehr, Sabine (2008a) The Children of the Isle of Youth: Impact of a Cuban South-South Education Program on Ghanaian Graduates. Ph.D. in Educational Studies, University of Victoria, Canada.
Lehr, Sabine (2008b) ?Ethical dilemmas in individual and collective rights-based approaches to tertiary education scholarships: the cases of Canada and Cuba.? Comparative Education Vol. 44, No. 4, November 2008, 425?444.
OECD (2006) Aid effectiveness. 2006 Survey on monitoring the Paris Declaration. Overview of the Results. Organisation for Economic cooperation and Development www.oecd.org/dac/effectiveness/monitoring
.
UNESCO: Institute for Statistics. (2006). Global education digest 2006: Comparing education statistics across the world. Montreal, Canada:
Zeigler, Lee ?Cuba?s African Connection: International Education on the Other Side of the Cold War.? International Educator, Winter 1995, pp. 24 ? 28.
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