As readers know, I often criticize President Obama’s education policies, which are even worse than those of President George W. Bush.
But I am glad for his Supreme Court nominees, and now I am very happy that he has begun the process of normalizing relations with Cuba.
I visited Cuba as a tourist in February 2013 (yes, you can visit as a tourist if you call a tourist agent authorized to make arrangements by the U.S. State Department). Of the many people I spoke to, all were eager to see a new relationship between our countries. The people are eager for a new day. The embargo has impoverished Cuba. I flew with my friends on a charter flight from Miami to Havana. There are several every day. Once our nations have a normal relationship, it will be easier for us to travel in both directions. Cuba is a beautiful island with wonderful food, vibrant art and music, environmental treasures, and beautiful beaches.There are many tourists there from all over Europe and the Americas. We should be there too, engaging in commerce and tourism, enjoying our neighbors and their culture.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Same here, Diane. He won’t go down favorably for his education policies, but he’s done some truly remarkable things despite a worse than do-nothing Congress standing in his way. And he deserves credit for those things. Today was a big deal indeed.
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Glad he did this with Cuba.
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It’s interesting, though, that as we ease up on an embargo abroad, we are sort of creating our own embargoes within our society.
Consider Duncan wanting to deny funding based on tracking scores of students (scores of scores of students, and dozens and hundreds for that matter–ha ha) based on one central set of norms (standards, what have you), is totally creating sanctions within our own populace, isn’t it?
I get what their rationale is: that if we know we spend money on education that does not bear fruit, we suffer as a nation. But isn’t that something like denying good to less than stellar workers? Are these type “do it this way or face doom” mindsets simply something the rest of the world has always known, but spoiled Americans have not? And so a leadership who has no tolerance for human frailty (a la Ayn Rand and Duncan’s Atlas Shrugged existentialist theory) sees this as our weak spot and so wants to cure us of it?
My mind never rests on these subjects that superimpose education as a new way of corralling, well, all aspects of society. Will drop out rates go up again if we continue on Duncan’s wild ride?
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Denying food, not good
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I agree. I never understood why communism in China was tolerated, but Cuba was evil.
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Yes, we are very adept in dealing with communist countries – look at China and all the American companies that are so good at exploiting their labor and environment – just make a deal with a corrupt communist party member! Capitalism and communism are a great formula for big profit. Oh, and now we have one more place to export cigarettes! Look out Cuba, hold on to your environmental treasures – they may become home to a walled hotel to keep out the “undesirables” – As for President Obama, he has surely not used his bully pulpit to call out the best in us – I hope he will start soon. I would be glad to advise him on how.
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David,
My impression when I visited Cuba is that the embargo keeps the Castro family in power and impoverishes the people. I didn’t see any revolutionary fervor or anti-Americanism. I saw people who were eager to open stores, shops, restaurants, sell their services, buy and sell apartments, and lead a normal life. There is a large underground economy there, and a longing for freedom. The more we engage with Cuba, the better off the people of Cuba will be.
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Well said, Diane. Precisely.
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Maybe I’m being cynical, but I think it’s deserved after what I’ve seen from Obama. My guess is that Obama intends to simply replace the Castro family with his own oligarchical buddies. I hope to be proven wrong, but I don’t see the Cuban people benefiting from this, just being further exploited. I just have a sinking feeling that all of those beautiful beaches will soon have American hotels parked on them and the restaurants will be somewhat upscale versions of TGI Fridays. Meanwhile, the locals will be fenced out, but maybe you’ll get to see some of the braver ones begging through the holes in the fence.
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I agree with Diane very much!
I just hope Cuba changes positively without morphing into the hyper, free and unfettered, deregulated disgusting brand of capitalism that USA has become. Would this happen to Cuba as a result of American influences? How soon before the Waltons sinkt heir claws into Cuba’s markets and dominate their policies? It should not be up to us to nation build.
Yet Cuba can stand reform from within, for sure.
Even a colleague of mine said about her native oppressive Cuba that Fidel, while a bastard, did accomplish a superb education system with soaring rates of literacy and an excellent single payer healthcare system. . . . . . all free and nationalized.
We could take lessons from Cuba.
Vivan los Cubanos!
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Robert R.
” Would this happen to Cuba as a result of American influences?”
See Cuba circa 1955.
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Dienne, Prior to Castro American-owned hotels were part of Cuba’s economy, as were casinos that Meyer Lansky and others profited from. Since small restaurants were allowed under recent laws, Cuba may be saved from franchise restaurants.
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Dienne…your prediction for what will happen when US firms move in to take over the Cuban beaches, etc., is rather like what happened to Hawaii. The locals were/are pushed aside as the mega bucks corporations from not only the US, but Japan, China, and others, built high rise hotels and condos which have, in the opinion of many, destroyed the islands. The kamaaina Hawaiians feel that Oahu will fall under the weight of all the concrete….and this is called the Free Market.
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Kinda cool that our middle son is in his school production of GUYS AND DOLLS right now.
You see how the arts can broaden a child’s curiosity? They want to know about Havana. This will be relevant to the kiddos in the play.
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I don’t know… If we start trading with Cuba, it could put on on a slippery slope. What would be next? Trading with China?
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That should open up the country to our troops at Gitmo –and God only knows who else.
As much as I’d like to believe our president holds humanity in high regard and above all else, I am very skeptical. I have learned over and over again that Obama and his neoliberal posse do not do anything which might put them in a position to leverage their power and manipulate “free” markets without anticipating profits for their buddies in Big business. And that typically involves the exploitation of workers both here and abroad…
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“. . . I’d like to believe our president holds humanity in high regard and above all else, I am very skeptical.”
Considering he has no qualms about ordering the murder of a 16 year old American boy I don’t see him holding “humanity in high regard”.
While relations with Cuba should have been normalized 40 years ago the economic powers that be are seeing $$ $ign$ with this move. See Cub aof the1950s.
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I too applaud this while at the same time wishing to warn the Cuban people – BEWARE! The oligarchs are coming! Don’t let them take away the good things you have done there like your healthcare system. Don’t fall for consumerism and materialism, those are the seducers that will step ashore from the first vessels to land. I remain hopeful that the opening of Cuba to America will be a slow process and that Pope Francis will remain vigilant on their behalf. What a nice surprise to hear he was involved for the start. Interesting that this comes to fruition as oil prices are tanking and that the effect on Russia and Venezuela, two of Cuba’s supporters are under duress as a result. Accident?
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Maybe the normalization of relations with Cuba might have something to do with the untapped oil reserves just off the Cuban coast?
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Nooo, you think so?!?!?
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I expect we’ll be reading a lot more about that in the coming months. It had to be a factor in the analysis, even if it wasn’t a determinative one. The embargo has made it difficult and expensive for Cuba to tap its reserves. And aside from the economic interests of American oil companies, the US arguably has a legitimate interest in having some kind of oversight ability over deep water drilling happening a stone’s throw off the US coast.
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Maybe we need to enlist Pope Francis’ assistance to end the abuses of kids and teachers here in America. He seems to be quite the beacon of hope! He may be the only one able to change Obama’s heart about selling our public schools to the highest bidder.
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“Hopeless and Changeless”
You just can’t change
What isn’t there
Or rearrange
An “I don’t care”
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Yes I know Russia has been mostly out of the picture for a while. Rubio’s anachronistic comments about how bad this is just made me laugh, he’s eating the dust of history on this big time as are all the others on the right who simply can’t get their heads around the reality of what’s going on in Cuba today. One less boogey man for them to fling around, so sad too bad, get over it.
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Yes, having decent relations with Cuba is long overdue. The next step should be the de-colonization of the Guantanamo naval base and handing over to the rightful owners, the Cubans. We “lease” the base from Cuba but it is a phony baloney lease. The lease can only be nullified if the USA agrees to that. Castro has never accepted the money for the lease since he rightly regarded the occupation of Cuban territory as illegal. Give Guantanamo back to Cuba NOW! That is long overdue by more than 100 years; Guantanamo was booty from the Spanish American war. The US occupation of Guantanamo was imposed on the puppet government which we set up in Cuba. We don’t need this naval base any more, what’s the point of this continuing shameful charade?
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Interesting that one thing mentioned was that Cubans should be allowed to form unions…an odd stance given the current push to eliminate them here!
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Our nation likes to hide behind policies that have a righteousness-driven ring to them when in fact the policies are driven solely by economics and geopolitical interests. For more than a half-century, travelers entering US ports of entry have trembled with fear that any Cuban cigars they may have been carrying, regardless of where they were purchased or received as a gift, would be confiscated. Others were oblivious that they could be busted for this violation. But agents at the border had no choice but to follow government orders.
Yet China is near the top among the nations of the world doing evil. We stroke them and cower before them because they hold our debt. And not much appears to be done about its massive intellectual property rights violations and dumping of pirated goods.
Whatever one’s ideology, if any, we cannot deny that Cuba used to be controlled by organized crime and foreign corporations and then became the leader in that part of the world in literacy and standards of medical care and the ordinary folks’ accessibility to it.
The abuses of Cuba’s regimes were inexcusable, but did not not surpass similar offenses in other nations with which we lustily did commerce.
Let’s welcome our Cuban fellow world-citizens.
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Good points, Ron.
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¡Viva Cuba!
¡Viva la revolución!
¡Muerte a los Imperialistas!
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Vale! Vale!
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Nice post, Diane. Except that Castro is to blame for the economic hardships on the island, not us. I think Starbucks ultimately is more effective than the Marines in bringing about regime change. Did you smuggle back any cigars?
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“Premarital Text”
Everything in context
Nothing stands alone
Always is a pretext
So better hold the phone
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There is historical precedent for the Cuban “opening” from recent history: Communist oligarchies have been replaced by capitalist oligarchies in every country since the Berlin Wall came down. The shameful Communist Party rulers convert to capitalist CEOs, seizing vast public assets for their private ownership, becoming overnight a billionaire class.(We have a lot of experience here in the US with the politics of billionaires.) The direction is neo-liberal worldwide–towards capitalist oligarchy in China, Russia, Ukraine, wherever. Poor Communist Cuba developed the best school and health care systems in South America with the lowest child poverty rates in that part of the world, but it suppressed popular democracy and first-amendment rights; its vast undeveloped resources which will be bought up by billionaires from elsewhere: gorgeous beaches; offshore oil; a treasure of boxers and especially pro-level baseball players(see article in Sports Section of today’s NYTimes); picturesque Old Havana; perhaps 3-4 million cheap labor workers available to Apple, Wal-Mart, etc.; sub-tropical cheap acreage for agribusiness export of bananas, pineapples, prime tobacco, and soybeans. The Castro regime failed miserably to build a popular democracy in the face of US-financed invasions and CIA attacks and its own dismal party hierarchy. The failed Communist oligarchs in Cuba have nowhere to go but into the globalization matrix. Too soon to know how this will play out for the Cuban people. The small business cohorts running small restaurants, inns, etc., certainly will gain from this move, not clear if the vast majority will–Putin and the Chinese regime are iron tyrants now in those transformed places.
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This. Well said.
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I go by what people do, not what they say they do.
Just consider the Potemkin Villages of the now-vanished Soviet Union and all their shenanigans re staged pageantry to impress visiting VIPs, torturing and massaging numbers & stats to give the appearance of doing good and being efficient and practicing democracy, and giving people what they wanted while doing exactly the opposite—
Then consider how oh-so-often the heavy hitters in the charter/privatization movement follow the same playbook.
Folks, call it what you will, put whatever labels on it that suit your particular political philosophy or philosophical beliefs, but in practice it seems to come down to the same thing, whether it’s for money or ego or other self-serving reasons—
“For greed all nature is not enough.” [Lucius Annaeus Seneca]
Just my dos centavitos worth…
😎
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Here is a recent news in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada:
JIBC delegation strengthens ties in Asia
Representatives from the Justice Institute of British Columbia recently traveled to Asia to help develop new and existing relationships with institutions abroad. JIBC President Michel Tarko and JIBC Police Academy Director Steve Schnitzer met with representatives of 7 Chinese police colleges to explore opportunities to provide training and support curriculum development in areas such as leadership, criminal investigations, incident command, conflict resolution, mediation, negotiation, ethics, and standards; the delegation also discussed opportunities for faculty and student exchanges. Kevin Sanford, Program Director of International Affairs, and Mike Trump, Dean of the School of Criminal Justice and Security and the Office of International Affairs, traveled to Singapore and Hong Kong to speak with representatives of the Singapore Civil Defence Force, the National University of Singapore, and Nanyang Polytechnic. Sanford and Trump discussed opportunities to provide training, as well as opportunities for JIBC students to take courses abroad as part of their studies. JIBC News Release
I guess that British and American Police force POLICY is greater than Chinese Police force STYLE. But after providing a training service, I am wondering whose police force will gain the advantage of security’s style.
According to this thread, we are expecting more greedy people who will kill each other over material lifestyle. The more hunger people for material needs, the worse humanity spirit will be, and most of all, public education will go down below zero. In VN, public school teachers have to sell beer at night in club to rich and stupid male high school students in order to feed their young children.
Dr. Ravitch is historian and there are more than millions of immigrants from many different parts of communist countries where they must flee away to breathe the air in democracy with respect to humanity. However, the result of toxic land in China, and VN, and many unwanted mixed race children in Shanghai and Saigon, most of all, the living of (commoners) people are much poorer than ever. I do not how to express my sadness to see free trade has killed off the North American economy.
In America, in this website, all educators have exchanged their feeling of the oppression from the greedy business. Would all of you believe that the poor class in Cuba are better off from the global greedy business? Please think again. Back2basic.
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