Karelia was one of 18 students who joined in a discussion on February 14 with two visitors to their class, one from London and the other from Sydney, Australia, who spoke about conditions facing working people in the countries where they live and elsewhere in the imperialist world.

The two, Jonathan Silberman of the Communist League in the United Kingdom and Joanne Kuniansky from the Communist League in Australia, were part of an international team of Militant reporters who were in Cuba to cover the annual Havana International Book Fair, held February 3-13.

The students at the clinic are part of a pilot program in Havana for young people, ages 15-16, who have not completed sufficient schooling to go on to the university. Following completion of this one-year preparatory program they are eligible to begin full-time nursing studies. After three years they have the option of pursuing degrees in other fields such as biology and psychology, or entering medical school, although most remain in nursing.

“They get a chance to further their education and, at the same time, help to remedy a nursing shortage that we have particularly in Havana,” said Lourdes, one of the nurses at the polyclinic.

“We study professional ethics and the history of nursing and health care in Cuba before and after the revolution,” said Adelín García, president of the student body. “We also take courses in geography, math, biology, chemistry, and physical education, as well as political science, history, and defense preparedness.”

After a brief presentation by Silberman, students peppered the two guests with questions on a variety of subjects, from working-class resistance to the attacks by the capitalists, to the prospect of more imperialist wars such as the invasion and occupation of Iraq, to the price of books and reading habits in their respective countries.

The class realities of health care in the United States and other imperialist countries was one of the questions that drew the most discussion. Kuniansky, a meat worker in Sydney who was a registered nurse and worked in hospitals in the United States for a number of years, was able to bring that experience into the exchange.

One youth asked: when workers go on strike, what is the role played by immigrants—are the employers able to divide them by nationality? The students were particularly interested when Silberman pointed to the example of a successful struggle by garment workers in the Miami area to organize a union at the Point Blank Body Armor plant, where a number of the workers are immigrants from Cuba as well as other Caribbean countries.

The guests had been invited by Frank García, who teaches political science to the students. He himself is a third-year sociology student at the University of Havana.

García made the invitation when he stopped by the stand organized by Pathfinder Press at this year’s Havana International Book Fair, which García has visited often. “I first came by the Pathfinder stand in 1998 when I was a high school student, and I’ve been back to visit it at every book fair since,” he said.

Like many others, García has taken advantage of Pathfinder’s sale of books in local currency on the final day of the fair. He’s built up quite a library of Pathfinder titles, some of which he is now using as course books. Several students nodded knowingly when their teacher mentioned that Pathfinder was the publisher of Lenin’s Final Fight, a collection of writings by V.I. Lenin, and The Revolution Betrayed by Leon Trotsky, two central leaders of the October 1917 Russian Revolution.

During the class discussion, García held up the “Earth at Night” photograph on the back cover of newly released issue no. 7 of Nueva Internacional, which he had purchased at the book fair. The photo graphically depicts the gulf between the imperialist and the semicolonial world in terms of access to electricity and the class differentiation within countries as well. He went through the picture of the world, region by region, explaining to the students some of the realities of imperialist domination.

He asked Silberman to tell the students the story of the successful antideportation fight in the United States by Nicaraguan-born Rogér Calero, whom he had met during a previous book fair. “Calero later went on to become the Socialist Workers Party candidate for president of the United States!” García added with a smile.

After the class, the guests made a donation to the polyclinic’s library that included a copy of Nueva Internacional no. 7.

The pre-nursing program is one of more than 150 projects currently under way throughout Cuba to increase access to education and a broad range of cultural programs for working people. “As the result of what we call the Battle of Ideas, some 60 to 70 percent of the entire population here is today involved in some kind of formal education,” Juan Carlos Frómeta, who works in the offices of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party, told the Militant.

If the pilot project is deemed a success, it will be extended nationwide.  
 
 
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