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UNEDUCATED LOCALS PRAISE CUBAN EDUCATION
Support for Fidel from South Australian Cubists:
A South Australian teachers’ union journal has praised the achievements of Cuba’s education system, saying class sizes are small, schools are free and teachers well-trained ...
Former union organiser and journal editor Dan Murphy said the communist island under the regime of Fidel Castro had a 100 per cent literacy rate, higher than Australia’s.
“For a poor, underdeveloped country, they’ve achieved quite well and nobody can deny that,” said Mr Murphy.
“It (the article) doesn’t shirk away from other issues like requiring teachers to reinforce communist values. But it’s not a piece of propaganda out of Miami; it covers other facts you don’t strictly get.”
AEU state president Andrew Gohl yesterday endorsed the South Australian teachers union article, saying: “The fact that (Cuban) education is free, compulsory and funded significantly by the Government is something all governments should aspire to”.
Education in Cuba is “free” but at the same time “funded significantly by the Government”? That’s almost as perfect a contradiction as a highly-educated island somehow remaining poor and undeveloped.
AEU state president Andrew Gohl yesterday endorsed the South Australian teachers union article, saying: “The fact that (Cuban) education is free, compulsory and funded significantly by the Government is something all governments should aspire to”
So move there dickhead, then your kids’ education will be “free” too! And you will find alot of other things that are “compulsory and funded significantly by the Government” which may not be to your liking.
Posted by Vanguard of the Commentariat on 2006 10 09 at 05:16 PM • permalinkYes its “free” to somebody Francis. Unless you’re a thieving property owner or some other bourgouisie exploiter who pays taxes. Serves ‘em right the bastards!
Posted by Vanguard of the Commentariat on 2006 10 09 at 05:35 PM • permalinkA different view:
The Real Cuba site on Cuba’s “free education”.
Posted by Blithering Bunny on 2006 10 09 at 05:37 PM • permalinkSorry. I’m old school. Anyone believing, let alone teaching, this crap must be purged from the education system and blacklisted.
Let them write their self-pitying, maudlin books and make their sappy silly movies about the new McCarthyism twenty or thirty years from now when hopefully the world is a much safer place. Despite them.
“Former union organiser and journal editor Dan Murphy said the communist island under the regime of Fidel Castro had a 100 per cent literacy rate, higher than Australia’s.”
Yeah…right.
Posted by Dave Surls on 2006 10 09 at 05:47 PM • permalinkTrue Vanguard. It’s only a matter of who pays. Still you would think the Teachers Union would know that schools are funded 100% by government in Australia.
As for 100% literacy rates, literacy rates are defined by each country. For instance Japan has very high literacy rates despite their diabolical three character writing system. They manage this by saying only that you have to have learned to read the main syllabary and a few of the basic kanji (you need over 2000 to read properly) to be classified as literate. So you could be literate but unable to read a newspaper.
So i view Cuba’s claims sceptically.
I’m with you, Merlin. Myself, I eagerly await for the Cuban solution to
global warmingglobal coolingclimate change.Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 10 09 at 06:38 PM • permalinkWhere’s this union dude getting his info? Perhaps from the same place that spits out the propaganda about Cuba’s world class health care?
Posted by James Waterton on 2006 10 09 at 06:43 PM • permalinkCuba was the richest, most developed country in the Caribbean before Castro seized power. It’s current poverty is the direct result of 40 years of trying to fit the square peg of socialism into the round hole of reality.
Posted by Spectre765 on 2006 10 09 at 06:59 PM • permalinkAlso from the article in question:
The AEU also published a letter to the editor from student teacher and Communist Party of Australia member Craig Greer in its latest issue.
Mr Greer wrote that the federal Government “still can’t find enough money to mirror a fraction of what the Cuban Government has achieved”. “If Cuba is a dictatorship, then I’m ready to be dictated to.”This statement (“If Cuba is a dictatorship, then I’m ready to be dictated to.”) is very revealing of the philosophy of many on the far left, that is, they tend to abase themselves before power, and revel in the notion of the Totalitarian state, as long as the abuse of power is carried out in the name of the right ideology. With this in mind, many of the actions and statements emanating from the deep thinkers on the left make sense.
A South Australian teachers’ union journal has praised the achievements of Cuba’s education system, saying class sizes are small, schools are free and teachers well-trained ...
...not to mention they’ve also got the toilets of Amazing Suckability. Them Cubans are sumptin’, ain’t they. Cain’t for the life a’ me think why they ain’t takin’ over the world?
Cuba’s such a great place where everyone is smart and edumacated like a person who’s gone to a real university for fifty-seven years because they’ve locked the gates. Imagine not being able to get out of the grounds of the average uni campus and what’s more having to live in the same dorm room forever. And the electricity keeps going out. And if you complain about there being no diabetes medication to keep your child alive in sooper-dooper healthcare central Cuba they arrest your ass.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 10 09 at 09:04 PM • permalinkUnfortunately the concept of “free” public services is one held by many Australians as well, as if the various levels of government pull funding out of their voluminous bottoms, and there is no actual cost to anyone for the provision of these usually poor quality services.
The big difference is that under a marxist system such as Cubas, government owns all property and means of production, and provides what it thinks the population needs (gulags for dissidents, fairies and junkies, compulsory indoctrination for the peons) and provides no incentive for productivity, and thus eventually goes broke; under a social-democrat system such as Australias, the government taxes private property and production to provide services few need or want, and destroy the incentive to produce and create wealth, thus eroding their revenue base and eventually goes broke.
See the difference?
#8 BB Thanks for the link. Very revealing.
Of course the 100% is just good old Marxist propaganda. Actually it is impossible to achieve a 100% literacy rate anywhere, because in a large enough population sample, intelligence (usually required to achieve literacy) is distributed in a Bell like curve (scroll down for the graph). There are bright people and dumb people and some people just do not have the ability to learn. That’s a fact of life even if it displeases some.
So are we expected to ‘believe’ that Cuba has a negatively skewed distribution curve of intelligence? (scroll down for the graph). If so Cuba would be a unique nation of geniuses (with nothing to do) on that island! Ha ha.
So much for the South Australian Teachers Union, education, literacy and intelligence.
I’ll bet Fidel makes the trains run on time too, just like Musso. That used to be a joke, to illustrate the stupidity of selling out freedom for a mess of totalitarian pottage. Now it is the main argument of the left in favor of socialism of all flavors, from Red to Black to Green to Watermelon.
#17 Jdef
They expect to be the Big Chief Commissars, remember. Totalitarianism has an attraction for immature minds when they expect to be the torturers and not the tortured.#21 Habib,
Well one difference I must admit is an absence of GULAGs in the social democratic system. That’s a definite advantage, and if you can keep Commie student teachers away from the reins of power it might continue.I must say, however, that it would be a better, richer, more productive world if the morons who think public services are free just because the money goes through the gummint would understand the concept of TANSTAAFL.
For those who are not devotees of Heinlein or Milton Freidman that stands for There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
Posted by Michael Lonie on 2006 10 09 at 10:37 PM • permalinkThe left’s blindness (sometimes willful) of the realities of living in Cuba can be illustrated by this example:
An ex-ABC personality with a legal training was discussing her recent trip to Cuba with stand-in morning host on 774AM, Stephen Mayne. She thought the people were lovely, the music just wonderful - the usual fluff.
She had one reservation though. There were no decent sea-food restaurants as the locals were not permitted to own sea-going boats (odd that).
She comforted herself with the thought that Fidel Castro had outlasted 10 US presidents.I speak with authority on this, as my South Australian teaching history goes back 44 years.
The very lazy local teachers gave up a very moderate, politically-independent state union to these slavish Marxist drones, with their fully eyes open in the 70s.‘The March Through the Institutions’ was literal in our case. It was formerly the ‘SA Institute of Teachers Journal’.
By 1984 their journal was publishing articles praising the ‘superior’ teaching system of East Germany.
No Bull. I walked out of a meeting when I showed them what they had blindly accepted -the hegemony of NSW communists.They’ve had to go very down market now, but you have to give them credit for learning nothing new themselves in 30 years.
No wonder the state government ‘system’ is in a mess.Cuba loaned South Africa a lot of doctors to assist in rural areas in the 90’s. They were so well educated through this utopian system that the locals would not have a bar of them. They worked out real quick that they were useless.Pretty good at parroting propaganda. Not so good at medicine.
Must be the same doctors (a thousand of ‘em) Castro sent to Venezuela to assist the poor there. I read that in Cuba’s vaunted health care system (it’s free!), there is one doctor for every 500 ordinary Cubans. I always wondered where Castro got all those spare docs.
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 10 10 at 12:28 AM • permalinkTANSTAAFL…Mr. Lonie, ya beat me to it. “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”, 1966, Hugo Winner.
Got a first edition.
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 10 10 at 12:59 AM • permalinkI heard their literacy rate is really 110% but their math literacy rate is only 99.9999% thus explaining the incorrect figure on the literacy rate.
Here’s an interesting equation: Perfect literacy rate = Poor, underdeveloped country
Maybe if Australia paid their teachers what Cuban teachers make then Australia will have a perfect literacy rate too.
So Castro murders every retarded kid, every kid with severe dyslexia, every person with an extremely low IQ, every child that’s handicapped in such a way as to be inhibited from learning to read. Kills them all.
Yeah, I can see public school teachers thinking that’s a Utopian ideal.
Posted by Shaky Barnes on 2006 10 10 at 01:51 AM • permalinkMakes me embarrassed to be a SA teacher; I’ve met some of these types before, and they go right off at the deep end.
Posted by Simon Darkshade on 2006 10 10 at 04:43 AM • permalinkWell three hearty cheers for the govt plan to try and take education out of the hands of left wing nutcases. For anyone who doesn’t think the NSW education dept is leftist consider my course on modern history in High School:
1789 French Revolution - 2 months of study, no mention of the American revolution, probably because Amerikka is evil therefore its formation is unimportant.
No mention of the rise of the British Empire except for the Opium Wars - Damn imperialists forcing drugs on the third world!
Unification of Germany, Franco-Prussian war, lead up to world war one 3 weeks.
World War one - 3 days reading a chapter in a text book, and a friend and I had to correct the teacher as to what side Italy was on.
Russian Revolution - 2 months
World War Two - mentioned as a chapter in your textbook that you could read in your own time but wouldn’t have anything featured in exams. Oh…and the evil Amerikkans nuked Hiroshima.
Revolution in China - 1-2 months
Rise of the Viet Minh - 1-2 months
Post war Socialist reforms in the UK under Clement Atley.
etc…etc…..etc
A girl who finished near the top of the class had been so thoroughly brainwashed with anti-US propaganda that after being indoctrinated as to how the US was an enemy state (and knowing about Hiroshima) actually believed that Japan was our ally in WWII. and the teacher didn’t bother to correct this when she mentioned it later in the course.
The only film my class ever went to see as a school excursion in my entire time at high school was “Strikebound”. Telling the heroic tale of the formation of the Australian Communist Party.
I even got into a heated debate with my teacher who tried to insist that Soviet communism was a wonderful system that we should adopt.
Please - someone explain to me again how the NSW education department isn’t left wing?
Posted by Fragglerocker on 2006 10 10 at 05:20 AM • permalinkThis is a joke right? A spokesman from the South Australian teachers union saying that 3rd world teachers with 3rd world resources do a better job than his own members? Unfortunately, the average blackboard scribbler in South Australia is such a friggin’ stupid, know-nothing dullard they couldn’t possibly see the sad irony in such a statement.
#37
Graham Richardson in his book “Whatever It Takes” recounted his experiences going into an unfamiliar area to campaign for the ALP. He would always start by touching base with the local school teachers, as he knew that he would have support from them.
There were commenters on this thread at Belmont Club who took a very dim view of the so-called elites in the arts and media, who were going to be first up against the wall when the time of retribution came.She comforted herself with the thought that Fidel Castro had outlasted 10 US presidents.
I find it hard to believe that even an “ex-ABC personality” can be so pinheaded. What do they teach in “legal training” courses over there—I’m guessing not the differences between democratically-elected heads of state who have limits on how long they can serve a term and totalitarian dictators-for-life who protect their stays in office with guns.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 10 10 at 08:22 AM • permalinkFraggleRocker
Among the gems I taught by the Brisbane Grammar School history department:
- The American Revolution had no grassroots support and was the work of greedy oligarchs.
- The electoral defeat of Danny Ortega was a disaster for Central American democracy.
- Eric Honiker was as legitimate a leader as Helmut Kohl.
- The Baltic States were indebted to the Soviet Union, as they would have remained undeveloped backwaters without the assistance of the Soviets.
- The USA caused the war in the Pacific by bringing sanctions against Japan, leaving Japan no choice.
- The USA nuked Japan to undercut a grassroots Communist uprising.
- Only 20,000 people died due to political persecution in Maoist China.
- Nobody died at Tiananmen Square. The story of the “massacre” was concocted by the CIA.
- Ho Chi Minh was not a communist.
- The USA caused the Cambodian holocaust.
- There would be no wars if women ruled the world.
- Margaret Thatcher and Elizabeth I were not typical women.
I could go on but you get the picture…
The ABC excelled itself tonite extolling the virtues of a little Communist Regime style village in Russia where there is work for all,nobody starves,everyone loves their neighbour and they of course want the Communist regime back.
Followed by Snaggletoothed Red Kezza-his features contorted with bitterness and schadenfraude as he spat out the promo for an “anti George Bush” diatribe.
He’s becoming as eccentric as Phat Phil and just as predictable.Enjoy, Kezza -if it wasn’t for age discrimination policy you would be out of a plum job so fast your hair would turn gray overnight -oh wait…Wand, it’s obvious to me the Cuba has moved to Minnesota.
Posted by Some0Seppo on 2006 10 10 at 11:13 AM • permalink#42 Murph,
Have to admit that I’d agree that Maggie and Good Queen Bess are/were not typical women.I have thought hard about what would have been the alternative to the nukes in 1945 and what the cost of not using them might have been. It starts with another quarter of a million US dead from an invasion of Japan and ratchets up from there to hundreds of thousands of dead from the other allies (the Japanese in SE Asia were preparing to murder 300,000 prisoners as the war ended). Then add in the losses from having to conquer the various Japanese garrisons refusing to surrender one-by-one as well as the armies in China.
When you get to the Japanese casualties it gets even more horrible. There were some 5 million or more soldiers, sailors and civilian employees of the services who could be expected to fight to the death at a 90 % rate. There was a 28 million person militia being trained to charge tanks and machine guns with bamboo spears. There was the probablity of huge refugee flows away from the battle and millions dying of exposure during the winter of 45-46, or killing themselves and their children to avoid surrender as the civilians on Saipan did. Japanese deaths could easily run to 100 times the numbers killed in both nuclear bombings together.
That’s a helluva death toll just so leftie twits could feel good about themselves fifty years later. Dropping the bombs was a blessing for everybody except those immediately affected. One of those prisoners who otherwise would have been murdered called it a miracle of deliverance.
Posted by Michael Lonie on 2006 10 10 at 08:02 PM • permalinkThe education system in Cuba is used to monitor the revolutionary ideological purity of the student and his family. A Cuban student’s file reads like a dossier of sorts where the family’s involvement, membership and participation in the official political organizations are noted. Whether they practice a certain religion. Whether they have family members that have exiled. Whether they have themselves tried to escape the country. Every aspect of that family’s life in Cuba is recorded in that student’s file. If the child’s parent’s dont meet the government’s political agenda, then the child has no future as the government will not allow him or her to continue on to the university.
The government will also go to other extremes as well: the dismissal from the parents jobs. The forced relocation to another city or town. The sudden disappearance of their food ration cards. etc… etc.. In a state where every aspect of a person’s life is controlled by the government, one can expect no less.
Not to mention the ideological indoctrination that the child is subjected to.
So anyone that lauds Cuba’s education system is only proving a complete lack of understanding of same.
Posted by Val prieto on 2006 10 11 at 11:37 AM • permalink
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Anyone else think that 100% number is bogus? Maybe it’s one of those facts I don’t strictly get.