WHY IS CUBAN

EDUCATION THOUGHT AND PRACTICE RELEVANT TO ENGLISH EDUCATION?

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Las Tunas 2

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OPEN SPACES February 05 2013

A CRITIQUE OF SUPERFICIAL MECHANICAL LEARNING:

Rote Learning has been emphasised where “like all other systems of its age made more of the forms and symbols than of the things symbolised.

To repeat the words correctly was everything : to understand their meaning nothing thus the spirit was sacrificed to the letter.

He stated that whilst rote learning was declining so was the allied strategy of teaching by rules which consisted of giving the pupil the rule first thus providing the pupil with the net product of inquiry without the inquiry and producing an appearance of understanding without the reality.

__________ saw this as a hugely inefficient pedagogy because rules, ‘lying isolated in the mind and not joined to other contents as out growths from them- are continually forgotten. Instead he proposed that principles are derived from repeated engagement with particular problems and’ familiarisation with the facts’ so that ‘a new case is solved as readily as an old one’.

DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?

PRESSURES

Spencer distinguishes between principles that are derived by the student as a result of engaging with teacher set problems.

He suggests that the interconnection of principles becomes a resource for further enquiry and the organisation of knowledge rather than the collection or disparate facts and rules that arise from rote teaching and rules.

DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?

CESAR WITH HIS MUM

JOSE MARTI AND MARIA

Josie Marti: A false concept of public education The schools here – with their beautiful books, their grand facilities,

their outward order, their pencils and slates, their grammars and geography books – have become workshops for memorising

• where children languish year after year in sterile spelling lessons, maps and calculations,

• where corporal punishment is authorised and practiced,

• where time is wasted copying words and listing mountains and rivers;

• where the live elements of the world we inhabit or how the human creature can improve himself and serve in the inevitable contact with those elements, are never taught,

• where teacher and pupils do not share that warmth of affection which enlarges to giant size the student’s desire and aptitude for learning …. comforting and gladdening their paths in life’s unavoidable spells of dejection.

Comments about The US System in 1860s(?)

Josie Marti : Educational PrinciplesLay Education

Science and Technical Education until basic education becomes scientific – until a child is taught to manage those elements of the earth which are to nourish him when he is a man

Education for Life To make the student fit for his or her historic moment and

circumstance

Education must have national contentThe education of the sons of these smaller countries in

a country of an opposite character and superior wealth, can bring the student into a fatal opposition to his native country

NEO-LIBERALISM... ... has been characterised as the process of

marketisation rather than social investment (Giroux, 2008),> decentralisation yet with increased surveillance and control from the centre (Hill, 2009),

precaretisation in terms of a reductions in working conditions and job satisfaction (Negri, 2008)

and the diminution in equality of access to experience and outcome leading to marginalisation and, ultimately, increasing differentials in income.

More than half of children under the age of 16 have their own television sets at home. Young people in the UK spend more timewatching television than anywhere in Europe.

The licence children are given by their parents to get about independently has been dramatically constrained, mostgraphically illustrated in the proportion of 7 and 8 year-olds getting to school by themselves, which had declined from 80%to 9% (between 1971 and 1990).

A study of German and English schoolchildren’s travel patterns found that nearly a third of English children in the surveywere collected from school by car – almost four times the proportion of the same age group of German children. Three-quarters of German children walked home on theirown after school, compared to only one third of the English children. No particular place to go? [2003]

No Particular Place To Go:Children, young people and public space (2003)

www.groundwork.org.uk

Translation: "The Bush Plan: It will take away from you the morning kiss, the hug at the end of the school day, and your mischievous smile. Thank Goodness, we live in Free Cuba."

“..collective mobilisation , religious and indigenous tradition and a long experience with struggles for liberation , tempered by a sense of tragedy and failure, have allowed Latin America to follow a path that differs from post Cold War messianic visions of inevitable progress elsewhere. “ p3

Guardiola _Rivera (2011)

5 CRITERIA FOR A CULTURAL HISTORICAL APPROACH

Education is a product of the family, school and society, not solely of the school. It is a complex product of social relationships and cultural interchange.

Many educational tasks are required straight from the moment of birth of the human being.

The correct social inter-relationships and collaboration, the emotional climate, a child’s use of objects and the formation of signs and meaning are all required to learn language, writing, calculation, drawing, and concept or meaning formation etc. (cultural mediation)

'Vivencia' is a term from Vygotsky that is not easy to translate but it a sense of self, worth and confidence in response to life experiences. It in part relates to resilience and perhaps the somewhat unfashionable notion of ‘character’ but it, also, has a social and collective dimension. Its production enables the sensitivity to and attribution of sensations from practical experience, which can produce, a cohesive personal commitment to their own education and development.

Adults and peers participate actively in the organisation of the social and cultural environment of the family and the school to enable the active and independent participation of the learner in their development.

THE FUNDAMENTAL GOALS are for the child to take and learn cultural content and media awareness in order to

develop necessary emotional, motivational and psychological knowledge which includes symbols, signs and meanings from real life. Early, preschool and school education programmes also facilitated support and guidance for families.

Early, preschool and primary education in Cuba aims to create a positive emotional environment that facilitates interaction with children. It involves the development of communicative language, encouraging children to be independent and to work by themselves and collectively as well as the manipulations and use of objects as tools to solve tasks.

There is an emphasis on games of all types as well as real life roles. Working in different modalities is encouraged through drawing and the building of graphic and 3d models. Children are taught that words and the sounds that form them can be represented graphically through a range of developmentally appropriate activities.

This leads on to the teaching and learning of writing, reading, calculation and about the environment in which the children live.

SPECIAL NEEDS APPROACHES Approaches to meeting the special educational needs of children build

upon the above principles and priorities with some additions. The principles that apply to the development of all children in general must, logically, also apply to children with Special Educational Needs.

The process of teaching, learning and development should also include ‘correction’ and compensation for the consequences of biological deficits where possible and appropriate.

Assessment should be explanatory and comprehensive but not classificatory or descriptive based on psychometric assessment. There will be inclusive education in mainstream schools where the quality of education in general ensures that there is learning, development, remediation and compensation for those children with special educational needs

MAP OF CUBA

Yo soy un hombre sinceroDe donde crece el roble