Too Much Noise

Too Much Noise / Fernando Damaso
Posted on May 25, 2014

The hype around the Mathematics entrance exam for higher education is
exaggerate and ridiculous. As if it were something new, without taking
into account that it also happened last year at a different level of
instruction, as well as has been happening, in the face of the silence
and complacency of many, for many years.

Have people already forgotten about the massive promotions of a 100% in
most of the High Schools in the Countryside, which were always an
institutionalized fraud?

Who doesn't know that, in many schools, for years the teachers have been
helping their students to the content of the exams, with the objective
of their passing the grade, which means the teachers will get good
evaluations?

Are we forgetting how many high school diplomas have been bought, to be
able to get a job in certain economically privileged sectors?

To announce today, in the press, that these events won't go unpunished,
is to unleash a witch hunt in search of scapegoats to bear the full
weight of the law, doesn't exempt the truly responsible: a system that
hasn't been able of preserving nor developing the civil and moral values
that always characterized the majority of Cubans of whatever social
level, as well as forcing citizens to live in poverty, struggling every
day to live on their miserable wages, which has generated corruption,
stealing, crimes and other greater evils well known to all.

This is not a unique situation that shows up only in education. It also
exists in many other areas: healthcare, services, production, culture,
sports, etc.

The bad thing is, although we try to minimize it, it corrodes our
society and, in order to rid ourselves of it, it's not enough to go
after certain isolated events that come to light now and again, rather
we must make decisions and take serious and deep measures to attack the
roots, which, to date, are striking in their absence.

23 May 2014

Source: Too Much Noise / Fernando Damaso | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/too-much-noise-fernando-damaso/