“We must ensure that the teachers working in our classrooms today stay working there, we must add to their reserves, jealously guard the young human resources we have trained over the last few years, paying special attention to their professionalism and up-grading. We must continue to analyze the inescapable changes that our technical professional and senior high school education must undergo; we must improve the way higher education is made accessible to all and we must make sure that all of the country’s universities move forward from this idea towards the academic and revolutionary excellence that the country demands from its university students and professors”.
Quotes
“Throughout the Battle of Ideas we have made an old dream come true: the universalization of higher education, thus making universities accessible to all the young people who graduate from the Revolution’s programs and to workers in general”.
“The trend towards the privatization of knowledge and the internalization of scientific research companies subordinated to big capital has been creating a kind of "scientific apartheid" which affects the vast majority of the world's population.”
"Ideas are born of knowledge and ethical values. An important part of the problem would be technologically solved, another must be cultivated restlessly. Otherwise, the most basic instincts shall prevail".
“New knowledge is not in the hands of the poor nations who today make up three-quarters of the world’s population. It is in the hands of a privileged group of wealthy and developed capitalist powers, associated with the most powerful empire ever to exist, built on the bases of a globalized economy, governed by the very laws of capitalism described by Marx and thoroughly studied by him. Nowadays, as humankind still suffers from these realities due to the very dialectics of events, we must confront these dangers.”
“In Cuba we offer everyone solid knowledge, an artistic education and the right to graduate from university without paying any tuition. More than 50 thousand children with learning disabilities receive special education. Computer science is extensively taught. Hundreds of thousands of well qualified people are employed in these tasks. But Cuba must be blockaded to free it from such a terrible tyranny.”
"In one single African village –as we have already said and we shall repeat as many times as necessary– a Cuban internationalist doctor can at the same time train several excellent doctors at his side, in the biggest laboratory in the world, the community, to struggle against the particular diseases affecting each specific region in Africa. The books accompanying this doctor would be used as a common source of knowledge".
“We will make use of computers, not to create weapons of mass destruction and exterminate people but to convey knowledge to other peoples. From the economic point of view, the development of the intelligence and conscience of our fellow citizens, made possible by the Revolution, allow us not only to aid those in most need at no cost to us, but also to export specialized services, including healthcare services, to countries that have more resources than our own. In this field, the United States will never be able to compete with Cuba.”
“Let us go over every discipline, every human and material resource we devote to sports. We must analyze this deeply, apply new ideas, concepts and knowledge. We must distinguish between what is done for the sake of the health of our citizens and what is done for the sake of competing and making this instrument for the wellbeing and health of everyone more accessible”.
“Today’s society was not the natural form in which human life evolved; it was a creation of already mentally developed man, without which he couldn’t conceive of his own existence. What is being proposed is, therefore, whether the human being will be able to survive the privilege of having a creative intelligence.”
"This stairway, to which I never imagined I would be returning, keeps some indelible memories of the years when I began to become aware of our era and our duty. One can acquire knowledge and awareness throughout one’s lifetime".
“…the country will have much more but it will never be a consumer society. It will be a society of knowledge, of culture, of the most extraordinary human development imaginable, development in art, culture, science [...] with a breadth of liberty that no one will be able to dismantle. We know this already, we don’t need to proclaim it, but it is worth remembering.“