User:Paulacano12/Cuban literacy campaign

Here is where my planned edits go, copy and paste from the original article, make the edits here, then publish. Small pieces at a time this is drafting.

Education improvements
Many of the Literacy Campaign’s volunteers went on to pursue teaching careers, and the rate of teachers is now 11 times higher than it was before the revolution. Before the revolutionary government nationalized schools, private institutions often excluded large segments of society; wealthy Cubans often received exemplary instruction in private schools, while children of the working class received low-quality education or did not attend school at all. Education became accessible to a much larger segment of the population after 1959. The percentage of children enrolled in school in Cuba (ages 6–12) increased dramatically over the years:


 * 1953—56%
 * 1970—88%
 * 1986—nearly 100%

It is estimated that 268,000 Cubans worked to eliminate illiteracy during the Year of Education, and around 707,000 Cubans became literate by December 22, 1961. By 1962, the country’s literacy rate was 96%, one of the highest in the world.

The success of the campaign is owed in part to the fact that it brought the systematic issues in the country to the attention of the government. Major issues like health and healthcare in Cuba, as well the lack of accessibility for child care, and other disadvantages largely determined by class, were proving to be barriers to education in Cuba. This enlightenment allowed them to alter some of the structural issues that were inhibiting the overall education level of Cubans. (citation 27)

The original literacy campaign of 1961 was part of a broader plan for educating the population beyond simple literacy at a 1st grade level which was named the Battle for the First Grade. The end of the literacy battles was the success of the Battle for the Ninth Grade waged in the early 1980s and by 1989 the literacy level of the island was above the ninth grade level. However, by 1980 1.5 million participating adults had already achieved the sixth grade reading level and were already in the planning to continue a path of permanent education for all.

International education campaigns
Cuban literacy educators trained during the campaign went on to initially assist in literacy campaigns in 15 other countries, for which a Cuban organization was awarded the King Sejong Literacy Prize by UNESCO (citation28). Additionally, over the past 50 years, thousands of Cuban literacy teachers have volunteered in countries such as Haiti, Nicaragua and Mozambique (citation18). The success of international literacy campaigns can be attributed to a flexible model developed by a team of Cubans led by Leonela Relys, a former brigadista, entitled Yo sí puedo (Yes I can) which gained momentum with each successful country adaption including Nicaragua's literacy campaign in the 1980s. The literacy campaigns were even further propelled into the international stage by the 2004 creation of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (Spanish: Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra America, ALBA). Now, the campaigns are present in 26 countries around the world and proof of the successful campaigns continues to be verified by UNESCO, which declared five Latin American countries free of illiteracy (Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua). However, not all exported programs are as successful such as the case of Timor-Leste in which changes in government, several spoken languages and the lack of a post-literacy program all unite to create dangerous circumstances in which literacy campaign students might revert back to illiteracy.

Museum

The Museum for the National Literacy Campaign (Museo Nacional de la Campaña de Alfabetización) is located in Escolar Libertad city and was inaugurated December 29, 1964. The thank-you letters to Fidel Castro, used by UNESCO to evaluate the success of the campaign in 1964, are kept with photographs and details of all 100,000 volunteers in a museum in La Ciudad Libertad (City of Liberty), which is in Fulgencio Batista's vast former headquarters in the western suburbs of Havana (citation 18). Among the other prized possessions of the museum are samples of the manuals for brigadistas and the books meant for their students, the UNESCO report that cemented the success of the literacy campaign, and newspapers from the time as well as video footage of the volunteers work. The Museum's goal, like the goal of many other museums across the world is to preserve, conserve, and publicize the formation of a heritage, ideology, society, or feat. The efforts of the museum go beyond conservation and is open to the community, researchers, schools, with a commitment to continue educating on the history of the literacy campaign as it spreads to other parts of the world.