International educators conference held in Cuba [Full Text] HAVANA - President Fidel Castro told a group of educators from around the world that education can create a better world by helping to resolve social problems, such as the nagging racial discrimination that still exists in Cuba. Closing the international educators conference here on Friday night, Castro told hundreds of participants that over four decades his socialist government can boast high marks for its primary school programs. But he said secondary education here needs serious improvement.
Beginning in early 2002, Cuba launched a campaign to improve conditions at its primary schools, but reforms for the older students are still pending. Cuba's secondary school program will be radically improved, Castro declared. "The future developing of our education will have enormous political, social and human connotations," the Cuban leader said.
Despite the huge changes that the 1959 revolution made in Cuban society, some social problems have not been completely eliminated, including racial discrimination, Castro acknowledged. "While science shows unquestionably the real equality that exists among human beings, discriminations lives on," especially among the island's poorest groups, Castro said. [End]
Semester at Sea Program Celebrates 20 Years at Pitt - Andrew Waples, of Bow New Hampshire, laughs next to Cuban President Fidel Castro December 6, 2002. Waples was one of more than 700 American students visiting Communist Cuba on a round-the-world educational cruise organized by the University of Pittsburg. REUTERS/Rafael Perez - *** The Spring 2001 semester marked the 20th anniversary of the Semester at Sea program at the University of Pittsburgh. The program has been sponsored academically by the University since 1981 and is administered by the Institute for Shipboard Education. Semester at Sea is offered as one of many study abroad opportunities made available through Pitt's University Center for International Studies. Central to the mission of the program are the University and the institute's ongoing cooperative commitment to combine academic excellence with cross-cultural experiential programming.
While the first voyage in the spring of 1981 sailed with only five Pitt students, the spring 2001 voyage sailed with a record 75 Pitt students. During the past 43 Semester at Sea voyages, 20,153 undergraduates representing an estimated 1,200 different colleges and universities have participated under the University of Pittsburgh's sponsorship. Of them, 932 have been Pitt students. An additional 123 faculty and 139 staff members from Pitt also have participated.
The program was among the first to take large groups of students in the early 1980s into mainland China and later, in the mid-1980s, to the former Soviet Union. Other benchmarks during the past 20 years include renewed visits to South Africa in the early 1990s, the inclusion of Vietnam and Cambodia as part of the field component in 1994, and most recently, Cuba since 1999.
During the past two decades, participants have had the opportunity to engage in dialogue with public figures such as Madeline Albright, Corazon Aquino, Peter Arnett, Fidel Castro, Arthur C. Clarke, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Richard Threlkeld, and Desmond Tutu.
A particularly successful element of Semester at Sea's in-port field program since 1994 has been involvement at the local level of area kindergarten to 12th grade students through the Vicarious Voyage Around the World program. Coordinated through the institute in conjunction with the shipboard administration, groups of three to five Semester at Sea students "adopt" a grade school class and communicate with them throughout the term. Personal exchanges during the voyage provide K-12 students with a very real connection to the experiences of those traveling around the world. Items sent home in "culture packets" - a newspaper, menu, map, stamps, or language brochure - enable the teacher to make the international learning experience come alive in the local classroom. ***
And as for the so called intelligentsia? It is a well known fact that many educated and intelligent people simply have no comman sense. It is the reason Volvos are so well built!
Yeah, like how to eliminate the basic desire for freedom that all human beings are born with....