Many Cuban parents are not sending their children to school

From our Signs of Impending Collapse with some assistance from our Bureau of Resistance to the Brainwashing of Children

It’s a new way to protest in Cuba, and its significance could be enormous. Parents are not sending their children to school, and the absentee rate can sometimes be as high as 65%. Since all schools in Castrogonia are run by the dictatorship and engage in constant indoctrination, school attendance is mandatory. The fact that parents are keeping their kids at home and are NOT being severely punished is a sign that the indoctrination system is collapsing and Castro, Inc.’s repressive machinery isn’t functioning properly, at least in this sphere of public life.

So, this development is good news. It’s a clear sign that the dictatorship is crumbling and headed for collapse, just like all the homes on the island

One factor affecting school attendance is a severe teacher shortage. With fewer teachers, the reporting of absences to Castro, Inc. has obviously slowed down or stopped altogether. Another factor is the severe food shortage plaguing the island. Schools often have no food for the children, something that had always been a lynchpin of Castro, Inc.’s control of education. It was a bonus that parents came to depend on. Now, with zero food in the schools, and little food at home, some parents are choosing to keep their kids at home, where they will at least get something to eat. There are reports of children fainting from hunger in the schools.

The most significant factor in this school attendance crisis is not a shortage of food and teachers, however. At bottom, what drives many of these parents to keep their kids at home is their frustration with the dictatorship. Saying “no” to indoctrination is a form of resisting a bankrupt dictatorship. These parents surely know that there are penalties for refusing to send their kids to school, yet they seem willing to accept the possibility of punishment.

Abridged and loosely translated from Diario de Cuba

One of the many facets of the crisis in Cuba, sometimes imperceptible amid so many others, is the impact it has on school attendance. Much is said about consequences like the exodus of labor from the state to the private sector, migration, the vicissitudes caused by inflation, problems with the distribution of milk and bread… but not about collateral effects such as not sending children to school. This is, in addition to being a consequence, a covert form of citizen protest.

“If there’s no bread the day before, I don’t send my child to school. If I don’t have money to buy him even a powdered drink, I don’t send him either,” says Yamilé, a mother from Holguín.

“And if they take away the electricity before I can prepare breakfast for him, even less. Imagine that it’s rare for two or three times a week for something like this to not happen or everything at once, as often happens. So, he goes less. And if they dare to complain to me, because I’m so irritated that if you prick me instead of blood, venom comes out. This is unbearable, we’ve reached the limit,” she explains angrily.

Indira, another mother with school-age children, says it’s “terrible” what families go through “so that children learn something and meet the school’s demands.”

“They ask for everything because they don’t even have light bulbs. And you also have to give them a snack to take. Before, I would give him the bread that I get in the rationing quota, but not even that arrives anymore, and on the street, it costs 40 pesos. My husband earns 200 pesos a day and it’s not even enough for breakfast. If I don’t have to give, I don’t send him, damn it.”

“There are children who have fainted in the classroom because if they don’t have milk or bread, and all they have is a glass of watered-down soda, then it doesn’t sustain them and hunger weakens them. And what appears is very expensive. Before, the morning session enrollment area would be full; now, with those they gather, it’s barely enough for two full classrooms,” Indira points out.

“We parents get upset with so many problems and end up leaving the child at home, not just because we don’t have what’s needed, because in the end we give them something, even if it’s a glass of sugar water or a banana or a sweet potato, but we do it out of discomfort, to show that everything is wrong and that they can’t demand that it work well. But in the end, it harms the child’s learning. Nothing works and we know they are learning very little. Nothing works in this country,” she adds. . . .. . .

“There are days when we have a 65% absence rate, that happens when the bread doesn’t arrive. And when there’s a milk shortage, in preschool, first, and second grades, a lot of kids are absent. Similarly, when it rains, fewer children come, which didn’t happen before. It’s like families are overwhelmed, at their limit, and nothing matters. The power cuts are frequent; with these blackouts, we barely reach 50% attendance, and teaching in dark, poorly lit classrooms is terrible. It affects the children.

“Before, a 5% absence rate caused chaos. I used to have meetings with the teacher, with parents, and it was a big problem. Now, it’s normal for classrooms to have only half of the children. The truth is, we always report a bit more attendance than actual to avoid scrutiny from the municipality because the blame falls on us; they come down hard on us, affecting our professional evaluation. But how can we demand parents to send their children if we know they don’t even have bread for breakfast?”

Whole story HERE in Spanish