Cuban youth and revolutionary values : allá en la lucha

If the function of schools is to produce students who will be productive in society, how does schooling in a socialist country differ from schooling in a capitalist country? Would the product of the different systems be any different? In the hope of finding an answer, I conducted fifteen months of fieldwork in Havana, Cuba. The hallmark of being “revolutionary” was to have acquired conciencia. In this historical ethnography, I trace the historical roots and progress of creating conciencia in revolutionary Cuba while documenting my lived observations of spending time with schoolchildren, their teachers, and their families. Additionally, I juxtapose this lived reality with sources of the “official discourse”—the MINED, researchers, and newspapers—to reveal the areas of disjuncture and bonding between the Cuban state and its people and the teachers and their students.