Erasmo Calzadilla’s Diary

As usual, I got home late, after my family had already gone to bed. But a couple of Saturdays ago I was taken by surprise when I opened the door. In the dark, sitting on the sofa with her head in her hands was my grandmother, who had waited up for me.

If someone wants to know my political position, I’m declaring it here once again, though I’ve written on this matter before. I am a staunch enemy of everything that impedes the freedom and spiritual development of human beings, and therefore I’m against any asymmetry in the access to power.

On Thursday, November 19, there appeared a relatively extensive article in the newspaper Granma titled “The Intellectual Orphanage of Human Rights Watch.” A journalist for the official organ of the Party informed us that the preceding day this NGO had accused the “island” of failing to improve its human rights record.

The experience of standing in front of a group of students to discuss or orient them on the history of philosophy shifts between the agreeable and the absurd. At times I feel like I’m making a real contribution to the spiritual or cognitive development of some of them, but in most cases I sense that the message is falling flat – and despair becomes my companion.

From whose head sprang such a twisted idea? I’m convinced it didn’t come from a child. It seems more likely this occurred to somebody worried about sowing -as soon as possible in the impressionable minds of adolescents- a siege mentality.

One would suppose that a mass-based socialist revolution such as the one that triumphed on January 1, 1959 would carry those demanded reforms to term, but real-life events took a different turn.

Who should control the content of philosophy classes? Sparks fly when this question is raised in Cuba. In this hot corner of the world, this leads us directly to the question of how and under what standards the issue of education is conceived; or better yet, what is the function of education and who is it for? Let’s begin at the lowest rung -the students- and then move up.

Yes, it’s good that there is mass and free education for all the children and young people in Cuba. However, it’s like destroying with kicks that which has been crafted with hands if such collective achievements demand the relinquishment of individual rights.

At the moment I am not completely without work, since I’m still under contract as a professor with a night school. Through this I’ve been able to untangle myself without problems and have even been able to contract for more hours of classes than previously.

The teaching of values is a wonderful endeavor. I appreciate it as an attempt to educate human beings in a more comprehensive manner, and not to reduce it to the transmission of techno-scientific knowledge to students presumed to be politically neutral.