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Democratic engagement in Cuba’s schools
In this extract from Beyond the Blockade, a collection of accounts from members of the National Education Union who have travelled to Cuba to exchange ideas with Cuba teachers and educators, GAWAIN LITTLE reflects on a refreshingly different educational culture
Cuban schoolchildren

ONE OF the first things to strike me, on my first ever visit to a Cuban secondary school, was the level of engagement of the young people. 

I was not the only person to pick up on this. On that delegation (in 2016), we had two teenagers and their immediate reaction was the same. 

Discussing the visit 15 minutes after it finished, they both commented on exactly the same phenomenon. 

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