“Before answering that question [of comparing education before and now] I am going to tell you when I left education and asked for leave, I was already stubborn and I couldn't handle it anymore, it was in 1985 or 1986. A friend of mine arrived to my home, riding a horse and he told me: 'Leo, how are you going to stop being a teacher?' He loved me very much. And I told him: 'I stopped being a teacher because I simply liked being a teacher.' And he told me: 'I understand you.' About education I can tell you about things that I was disgusted with. For example, what affected me the most was the promotion in schools. I can tell you about promotionism that there were 650 students in my school, it was oversaturated with enrollments of all the boys from rural areas. Some were not from rural areas, but those places were reserved for the children of the leaders who wanted to bring their boys there in case they wanted to get rid of them for fifteen days, because they had other positions, that's what happened. And all the boys had to pass. You had to approve 100 percent of the guys. There are even cases of boys who were practically subnormal and were the sons of leaders, they had to be approved. All of this came behind the promotion, then there were other years that the tests of alienation were implemented. It meant giving the test to the boys and after that, the teacher left the classroom. Those things collide with someone who really wants to educate how it should be."
“I'll tell you something else – before, you had to have high averages. Today even 60 points do not affect you to choose a career. Even if there is an admission test, also, if it is not a highly valued career, you can access the university. And that tells you everything. You understand me? And then, honestly, one of these doesn't have a level, they have a total ignorance, they don't know anything about history and the history they do know is a skewed history. They don't know anything about mathematics, they don't know anything about Spanish, much less, they are illiterate. And civic education is not known. I dream that one day one of the main objects in Cuban education would be the civic education. It would be excellent for the first years of a republic with democracy in Cuba to start working to end the anthropological damage we have today. And it is the result of the education we have had”.
"[My father's] little store stopped when... I witnessed it in 1968 when this cataclysm triumphed... It was on March 14, 1968 when they knocked on the door of my house, I got up because [my father] told me: 'Tomorrow they are coming for me.' I don't know why I knew. And I got up and saw a man who brought a young colleague, about 16 or 17 years old. And he told him: 'Now, this is ours.' I started crying, I was about 14 years old and my dad told me: 'That's ok, son, this doesn't matter.' Later, over the years, I found out that the girl who intervened in my father's store was the same girl who saved my father's mother's life, because she gave her 90 pesos for an operation. However, I sometimes say that the Cuban people were so innocent, so good, that they gave their all. My dad treated that girl who confiscated his store like a daughter of hers, and she almost became part of the family. He helped her and did not hold any grudge against her. Things that sometimes, through the years that I have lived, I do not understand how a person can be so noble. Because it is not only the case of my father, it was the case of several people who later even worked as workers in the places and establishments that they themselves confiscated and intervened. Like this were the people of Cuba."
Leonardo Rodríguez Alonso was born on November 6, 1954 in the rural area of Camajuaní. His father was a man with very low economic resources, but he managed to get ahead by opening a small store, since he always believed in the opportunities of capitalism. When the Cuban Revolution triumphed in 1959 and later, when private businesses began to be confiscated, his father‘s store fell into the hands of the regime on March 14, 1968. Leonardo studied at the first Rural School and later took a course improvement as an emerging teacher. He first became a primary school teacher and later gave lessons also on high school level. He worked in rural schools, to which he managed to elevate them, and in his science and biology classes he never allowed totalitarian indoctrination to penetrate. However, after working as a teacher for 16 years, in 1985 he abandoned that profession that he loved so much, due to what he describes as the decomposition of the Cuban educational system, which, together with strong promotionism and a tendency to approve 100 percent of the students, it made life miserable for teachers with free minds. Due to his opposition opinions, defending capitalism and allowing himself to be surprised by his multiple trips to democratic countries, he was detained several times, and is being persecuted by the Cuban regime. He continues to live in Camajuaní and does not lose faith in Cuba achieving freedom.
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