A 1956 Ford in Havana, Cuba.
INTERNATIONAL CONNECTIONS
UC Links collaborates with a number of after-school programs around the world. As part of this international collaboration, Jim Grieshop, a faculty member and UC Links principal investigator at UC Davis, visited Cuba to learn about informal, technology-based education programs in that country.
Joven Clubs of Cuba
BY JIM GRIESHOP
In February, 2002, my wife and I flew to Havana, Cuba. Pat is a fifth grade teacher, and I direct several UC Links programs near UC Davis. In our work, we share computer-based educational activities with children, undergraduates, and adult learners in the Davis area. Because of our experiences in California communities, we were eager to see the Joven Clubs of Cuba. These clubs, like UC Links after-school programs, give young people an opportunity to learn a range of computer skills.
In addition, Cuban learners, like UC Links participants, acquire these skills in an out-of-school setting. We felt that we could gain valuable insight into our own work from seeing the Joven Clubs in action. We also hoped to form an ongoing partnership with Cuban educators, so that we could continue to exchange information about our work after we returned home.
We began our visit at the Joven Club Palacio Central de Computación (Central Park Youth Club for Computers), which is located in a former Sears Roebuck department store in the heart of Havana. The spacious first floor, where Cubans once shopped for washing machines and fans, now displays a dozen computers. These are just a few of the Club's 180 computers, which are available—six days a week, 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.—in ten labs throughout the building.
The Club's Assistant Director, Licenciado Damián Barcaz Naranjo, showed us around, pointing out features in the classrooms, libraries, and office. In a second-floor classroom, or aula, a group of instructors was testing new software. In another aula, a class of secondary students from a nearby special education school worked quietly on Pentium II computers, learning parts of speech and solving math problems. Some students worked together in pairs. This class, we learned, would spend two hours on the computers working with their teacher and the aide before returning to their school. As we walked through the building, we felt the promise and modernity of this place. The bright blue Joven Club logo, like the optimistic posters that lined the walls, beckoned to the future.
The Joven Club logo.
After we left the club, we discovered another vivid blue icon around the corner, one that communicated tiredness and the past: a 1956 Ford, one of thousands of Havana's maquinas, or older cars. Such are the contrasts of Cuba. The Joven Clubs are sites of energy and order, unlike the antiquated car resting on a nearby street. But, like the '56 Ford, the clubs are also signs of resourcefulness found in unexpected places. Despite limited access to computers and software, Cubans have managed to build a network of over 300 Joven Clubs throughout the country. In the provinces of Pinar del Rio and Villa Clara, mobile Joven Club units serve remote communities, and in even more remote, rural areas, solar-powered Joven Clubs have been established.
Staff members told us that demand for courses is high. Adult women, in particular, are eager to take advantage of the learning opportunities offered by the Joven Clubs. Marusa Jimenez, director of the Vedado Joven Club in Havana, speculated that women need computer skills for their work as bookkeepers and accountants.
Learners enjoy using computers for recreation as well. A number of young people were hanging out in the sites we visited, using the computers to install new software, play solitaire, or listen to music and play games.
The classrooms we saw were spacious, bright, and well ventilated. The available technology—Pentium II and Celeron computers running Windows 95 or 98—was basic but functional. Directors in three of the sites we visited had e-mail and Internet access, although classroom computers did not have such access. A few clubs, we learned, have begun to install fiber optic cable.
The Joven Clubs seem to be both a means to move toward a better future and a symbol of that movement. An emphasis on learning and a commitment of scarce resources to learning were evident in the four Joven Clubs we visited in Havana and Santiago de Cuba. The learning that takes place in the Joven Clubs is intended to make Cuba, in the words of one official, "el país más culto en el mundo"—the most cultured country in the world.
While we were in Cuba, we spoke with educators and gave them information about UC Links programs in the United States. They seemed curious about our work and expressed interest in long-term collaboration. Director Marusa Jimenez of the Vedado Joven Club shared with us her Club's computer skills curriculum, a modest yet impressive publication. We have since used these Spanish-language materials successfully in adult computer classes in Knights Landing and in the Dixon Migrant Center, near UC Davis.
In the months since our visit, we have tried to continue conversations with the teachers we met in Cuba, but this has been difficult. Although the Joven Clubs maintain websites, we have been frustrated by long waits for replies to our e-mails, and the responses we have gotten have been brief. Nevertheless, we plan to keep trying to connect UC Links programs in the US with Joven Clubs in Cuba. We believe that educators in both countries have much to learn from such a link.
Jim Grieshop is a specialist and lecturer in the Department of Human and Community Development at UC Davis. He directs the LEAP/SALTO UC Links program at Dingle Elementary School, the Manos UC Links program at Grafton Elementary School, and the Si Se Puede! UC Links program at the Yolo County Housing Authority. Pat Grieshop is a fifth grade teacher at Birch Lane Elementary School in Davis.
Cuban youth learn computer skills at the Joven Club in Havana.
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