Cuba: 45 Years of Free Education

Havana
Cuba has offered accessible, free education for all its citizens for 45 years, since on June 6, 1961, the revolutionary government decreed the Teaching Nationalization Law.

Two months after defeating the US invasion of Playa Giron (Bay of Pigs), the country ended the education system that served a privileged minority and brought real democracy to teaching.

The legislation declared teaching free and public, and that the State proclaims it a right of all Cubans.

At first the revolutionary effort in education had to solve the big problems left from the neo-colonial system, end illiteracy, and broaden education services.

The Revolution opened more than 10,000 classrooms in the country in 1959, which extended education to 90 percent of those between six to twelve years old.

Mass construction of schools and the conversion of 69 garrisons of the Batista dictatorship (defeated in 1959) into classrooms for 40,000 students had great political and moral repercussions.

The first Teaching Integral Reform considered the full development of the human being as a crucial goal of education.