HAVANA — The main auditorium at the University of Havana was packed with 200 enthusiastic students, graduates and volunteer teachers who came to celebrate 25 years since the founding of Cuba’s University Courses for Older Adults — “Cátedra del Adulto Mayor.” They cheered and applauded as Teresa Orosa, president of the program, also known as the University for the Third Age, reviewed their shared achievements and awarded certificates to the graduating class of 2024.
Many of those attending the Feb. 24 event had left home very early in the morning in order to arrive on time, undeterred by the acute scarcity of public transportation in Havana, one of the current challenges working people have faced because of Washington’s decadeslong efforts to economically strangle the Cuban Revolution.
Orosa, a professor at the University of Havana, was the founder and has been a driving force of the program. It was launched with the backing of the Central Organization of Cuban Workers (CTC), the nationwide trade union federation.
Over the years the effort became a nationwide movement, with hundreds of classrooms established in communities across the island and more than 120,000 graduates since its founding in 2000.
With the involvement of Cuba’s mass organizations — from the CTC to the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution and the Federation of Cuban Women — organizers and participants secure spaces to hold the classes, whether in a local community center, an unused classroom, a private home, or — when the students are inmates — a prison. They recruit teachers and guest speakers in different fields, some of them retired teachers whose experiences reach back to the early days of the revolution. The program is self-financed.
The courses — from history to science and culture — are decided based on the participants’ interests. They include activities to enhance physical and cognitive skills affected by aging, as well as workshops to keep up with technological advances, from using cellphones to making electronic payments.
The University Courses for Older Adults, together with the social and day care centers for the elderly that exist in Cuba, take on added importance today given the country’s rapidly aging population — a quarter of Cubans are now 60 or older.
Learning as a lifetime activity
The educational program builds on the conquests of Cuba’s socialist revolution in making learning a lifetime activity and breaking down prejudices and other barriers to the involvement of the broadest numbers of working people in social, productive and political activity.
“Our students come from all areas of production,” said Orosa. “We have port workers, artists, tobacco workers, scientists, teachers, food and health workers.”
“At first I was a bit fearful, because of my disability,” said María Eugenia Pino, a member of Cuba’s National Association of the Blind, when she was interviewed by Cuban TV last March. “But I told myself, this is a challenge I will confront, I’ll be brave.’” Pino was a graduate of the 2023-24 course.
At the Feb. 24 event, Orosa pointed to activities the University Courses for Older Adults holds to mark historic dates, such as Cuba’s successful 1961 mass mobilization to eradicate illiteracy or the April 1961 defeat of the U.S.-organized invasion at the Bay of Pigs. Many of the students are themselves veterans of these political and military battles of the Cuban Revolution, including the literacy brigades that taught over 700,000 workers and peasants to read.
At these events, “who would have thought that our students would bring the old rusty lanterns and uniforms from 60 years ago” when they went to the countryside to teach peasants to read and write, said Orosa. “Who would have known that among us there are so many combatants” who took part in different revolutionary battles, whether in Cuba or abroad.
“It’s been a life-enriching experience,” 86-year-old Georgina Arias told the Militant. A retired primary school teacher, Arias started participating in the University Courses for Older Adults 16 years ago. “After graduating I became a teacher in this program. I received a diploma from the Teacher Trainers Association,” she added with pride.