Being a Teacher in Cuba: Educating with Empty Hands
HAVANA TIMES – The bell rings at a school in Havana, but it doesn’t just announce the start of class — it signals the beginning of another day of endurance. In the classroom, before worn-out blackboards and outdated maps, stands the teacher. Her tools are not only chalk or books, but also a patience of steel and a vocation tested every single day. Her salary is merely an official, precarious number. This is the chronicle of a paradox: shaping the “future” with empty hands in the present.
The monthly salary of a Cuban educator ranges from 4,000 to 5,000 Cuban pesos ($9–11 USD). In the language of the street — in the informal market that dictates the real economy — that equals two or three kilograms of chicken. It’s also the price of a pair of cheap shoes, nothing more. A number that evaporates at the first basic need.
The Economy of Endurance
Teacher Yamile explains it with the clarity of someone who constantly lives in the red: “My salary doesn’t even cover a week’s worth of food. Coming to school every day is an act of faith. You open your purse and there’s your pay — a figure that’s almost symbolic, a true irony of the real value placed on our work.”
A teacher’s workday doesn’t end when school lets out. That’s when the second, and sometimes third, economic battle begins. Many turn into informal sellers — of sweets, coffee, anything that can bring in income. Others, those lucky enough to receive remittances, survive thanks to that family help from abroad. The younger ones, full of energy, find night jobs or work on their “days off.” Exhaustion becomes another companion in the classroom.
The Silent Exodus from the Classrooms
The result is a slow but steady hemorrhage. Classrooms are being left without teachers. Young graduates teacher training schools see the economic reality and quickly look for other paths to improve their finances. And who can blame them? Vocation doesn’t fill the fridge or cover the cost of living.
The exodus of educators carries a lasting cost: overcrowded classes, subjects without qualified teachers to teach them. Physical Education disappears because the instructor emigrated or found better pay at a gym. The quality of education — once a historical point of pride of the Revolution — is crumbling. Lessons are given with obsolete materials, energy drained by the constant worry of how to make it to the end of the month.
A Mirage of the Past
There was a time, the older generations recall, when the teacher was a respected figure. It’s true they were never wealthy, but at least they could live decently. Their salary had real purchasing power. That time now feels like an ancient history lesson. Today, the pyramid has inverted: trades requiring less preparation and knowledge far surpass the income of an educator with decades of experience.
The government acknowledges the problem. There have been salary increases, but they are drops in the middle of an inflationary desert. The pay raises are quickly swallowed by the uncontrolled rise in market prices. It’s a race lost from the start.
And yet, teachers persist. They grade exams by candlelight during a blackout. They share their snack with the student who didn’t bring one. They invent teaching aids out of recycled objects.
Their salary does not reflect their worth. Their salary is an act of faith by the state — a belief that vocation can replace all shortages. But faith, like patience, has its limits. Meanwhile, the Cuban teacher continues to give the most important lesson of all — one not found in the curriculum: the master class in dignity in the face of neglect, the lesson of endurance, and the belief, against all odds, that the future might one day be different.
Read more from the diary of Safie M. Gonzalez here on Havana Times.