Cuba’s education system is a source of national pride. One in
every 15 people is a college graduate. And even in the most
remote Cuban backwater, you’ll come across bright-eyed children
laden with satchels, making their way to and from school in pin-
neat uniforms colored according to their grades (younger ones
wear short-sleeved white shirts, light-blue neckerchiefs, and
maroon shorts or mini-skirts; secondary school children wear
white shirts, red neckerchiefs, and ocher-yellow long pants or
mini-skirts. Official statistics are contradictory. The Cuban
government claims that on the eve of the Revolution, 43 percent
of the population was illiterate and half a million Cuban
children went without school; however, the U.N. Statistical
Yearbook suggests that as much as 80 percent of the population
was literate, behind only Argentina, Chile, and Costa Rica for
the time. Private and religious schools are forbidden. In
December 1960 the government announced a war on illiteracy. On
April 10, 1961, 120,000 literacy wo