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REVIEWS

MAKING A NEW PEOPLE: Education
in Revolutionary Cuba. By Theodore
Macdonald. New Star, Vancouver. Paper
$9.95. Available at People’s Co-op
Books.

While visiting Cuba a year ago, I started
talking with a ten-year-old girl and her
parents sitting next to me in a restaurant.
Fortunately the mother was studying to be
an English interpreter and the father was a
mathematics teacher so my lack of Span-
ish did not make it difficult to get onto my
favorite topic — education. Now as many
readers know, Cubans are the friendlest
and most helpful of people, and so it was
that they insisted on sending a taxi the next
day to take me to their home for dinner
and then to visit their daughter’s elemen-
tary school and the father’s secondary
school a few blocks away. Later in the
week, our group spent a day at the blind
school in Havana which the Canada-
Cuba Friendship Society in B.C. adopted
soon after the revolution, and which now
is able to carry on without outside help.

These visits and conversations certainly
opened my eyes to the incredible job the
people of Cuba have accomplished in
changing a backward, illiterate population
into a virtually completely literate society
eager for broadening their education
regardless of age. At the time I thought,
what a fascinating story could be written
about this revolution in education. And
now, Theodore MacDonald has done just
that in his recent book, Making A New
People. ‘ ia

MacDonald has well succeeded in his
objective of relating the development of

_ Cuba’s school system since the 1959 revo-
| lution in a way which appeals to a general
readership as well as to those in the educa-

tion field to enable them to “understand
the dynamics of educational development
in the context of revolution.” The author,
an authority on learning psychology,
teaches in the Department of Education at
the University of Newcastle in: Australia,
and has studied and travelled extensively
in Europe and North America. He points
out that the development of Cuba’s
schooling system since the revolution con-
stitutes one of the most exciting stories in
the history of western education.

Considering that Cuba had a literacy
rate of only 25 per cent and with corrup-
tion rampant in the school system that did
exist, it is a miracle that today all of its
school-age children receive education and
60 per cent of adults are taking formal
part-time study of some kind. UNESCO
has assessed Cuba as completely literate
— unlike the U.S. and Canada which are
12 per cent illiterate. (The word illiterate,
according to UNESCO standards, means
a person who cannot read the directions in
a telephone booth.)

Because MacDonald could speak Span-
ish, he was able to talk with many citizens
and government officials, resulting in a
book lively with personal anecdotes but
also packed with actual facts and statistics.
He suggests that the latter be skipped over
for those not interested as it doesn’t inter-
rupt his narrative. Bese

The story of the literacy campaign is
almost epic in scope — a little poverty-
ridden country, a year after its revolution,
deciding to make everyone literate in one
year! And to do it they needed 250,000
teachers! As the author relates, the leading
senior educator Mier Febles said:

“The goals of the campaign was always
greater than to teach poor people how to
read. The dream was to enable those two

Cuba’s revolution in education

ti

Cuba’s premier Fidel Castro congratulates teachers at the conclusion of the
country’s massive literacy campaign, January, 1962.

portions of the population that had been
most instrumental in the process of the
revolution from the beginning to find a
common bond, a common spirit, and a
common goal. The peasants discovered
the word. The students and teachers dis-
covered the poor. Together they all disco-
vered their own patria.”

And that is what happened. As Mac-
Donald says, “As soon as it becomes
widely appreciated that freedom from the
bonds of illiteracy is ineluctably tied in
with freedom from the hands of imperial-
ist oppression, the days of the status quo
are numbered. Well might those who liv-

ing in privilege at the direct cost of the
masses of unprivileged throughout the
world learn to tremble in fear at the sight
of a book.”

Making A New People makes interest-
ing reading for anyone, but for those who
have a special interest in education it’s a
must. From descriptions of pre-school
facilities to the many changes and
improvements during the last 25 years to
the dreams of the future, Theodore Mac-
Donald has covered the whole expanse
humanely and objectively.

wee Betty Griffin

THE IMMIGRANT YEARS. By Barry
Broadfoot. Published by Douglas & Mcin-
tyre, Vancouver/Toronto, 240 pages,

cloth. $22.95.

_ Between 1945 and 1967 some three mil-
On immigrants came to Canada from
2urope. About one million came from Bri-
lain, the rest from the continent. They
Included tens of thousands from the poorest
ections of Italy, Portugal, Greece and other
ountries, seeking escape from lands rav-
aged by the war where the future seemed
1Opeless. In Canada they sought, and most
ichieved, a better life.
They included tens of thousands of Dis-
laced Persons (“‘DPs” as they were called)
Who fled west as the Red Army liberated
heir countries from Nazi occupation.
Among them were not a few who had col-
aborated with the Nazis against their own
eOple and some who could be classified as
Criminals. ;
In 1956, their numbers also included
usands of so-called Hungarian “free-
10m fighters” who with help from the coun-
Ties of the west, had attempted to
Verthrow the socialist order in Hungary in
iolent and bloody coup led by army and
lice officers, many of whom had been
art Of the fascist dictatorship that had pre-
ed in pre-war Hungary. On the appeal
the Hungarian socialist government, the
Army had moved in and helped to put
Wn the revolt. With the borders to the
it Open, those who had participated in
‘counter-revolution, together with others
© did not want to live in a socialist
iety, left Hungary and were welcomed in
est as “freedom fighters.” :
The Immigrant Years is a collection af
Personal recollections of over 140 0
immigrants.
‘hose Saterviewed include a broad cross-

lo

section — many different nationalities,
social backgrounds, occupations and out-
looks — and their experiences across Can-
ada, in cities like Montreal, Toronto,

Winnipeg and Vancouver, on farms in -

Ontario and the prairies, and in the forestry
and mining industries of Ontario and B.C.
Many, if not most, of the immigrants
suffered intense exploitation when they first
arrived. Often they worked 10 or 12 hoursa
day at wages of a few cents an hour under
intolerable conditions. They were victim-
ized by textile manufacturers, forestry and
mining corporations, building contractors
and in the service industries. Some of the
farm jobs were the worst. Often they were
the victims of their own countrymen who
had settled in Canada earlier and gone into
business. Loneliness and inability to com-
municate until they learned English were
major problems for many of them.

As a human interest account of their
experiences, The Immigrant Years makes
interesting and instructive reading.

But these personal recollections and the
editorial comments of the author which
precede them omit some important factors
that cannot be ignored. These three million
immigrants weren't encouraged to come to
Canada for humanitarian reasons. :

A conscious and deliberate campaign
was begun after the war to bring in large
numbers of immigrants who were anti-
Soviet, anti-communist, anti-socialist and
anti-labor. Major sources for this type were
the Displaced Persons camps in western
Europe. They were screened by immigra-
tion authorities and the RCMP for this pur-
pose. It was hoped and expected that they
would help to counteract the radicalism, the
support for socialism and communism, and
the growth of unions — all of which were
products of the Hungry Thirties and the

war years.

Often their opposition to progressive
causes in Canada did take violent forms. I
can vividly recall how in the 1950s when we
invited Pete Seeger to sing at a peace concert
in Edmonton, a group of DP goons vio-
lently attacked the hall where the concert
was held. We were quite convinced that
they weren’t acting on their own, that they
were organized and directed by the Dirty
Tricks branch of the RCMP.

The second reason for encouraging
immigration on such a large scale during
this period was to provide a source of cheap
labor and create a pool of unemployed.
‘This is what employers wanted: it enabled
them to pay low wages. Tens of thousands
of immigrants were at the mercy of ruthless
employers who exploited them unmerci-
fully and often illegally, knowing that the
immigrants could not be familiar with labor
laws or protective labor legislation in Can-
ada. :

It should also be added that many immi-
grants suffered cruel discrimination at the
hands of employers who promoted the idea
that they were inferior as the justification for
paying them substandard wages.

But despite the intention of politicians,
employers and governments, immigrants

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Glimpses of post-war immigrants’ lives

did join unions and did become union acti-
vists. They played their part in winning
many gains in the post-war period.

The interviews in the book also include
many examples of immigrants who went
into business on their own, some of whom
became rich (which is supposed to be the
measure of success in Canada). But those
who took this course were still a small
minority of the three million. The majority
just wanted a land free cf war, a decent job,
a chance to get a home of their own and to
build a better life for themselves and their
children. These three million immigrants
made their contribution to Canada and left
their imprint on its wealth, economy and
culture.

It could be added that difficult as their
circumstances were at times, they were
more fortuante in one sense at least than
those who had preceded them. Canada
experienced an unprecedented period of
economic expansion from 1945 to 1974 in
which most Canadians, through economic
and political struggles were able to win a
substantially better life.

— Ben Swankey

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