-DATE-
19650619
-YEAR-
1965
-DOCUMENT_TYPE-
SPEECH
-AUTHOR-
F. CASTRO
-HEADLINE-
STOMATOLOGISTS GRADUATION
-PLACE-
CHAPLIN THEATER IN CUBA
-SOURCE-
HAVANA DOMESTIC TV
-REPORT_NBR-
FBIS
-REPORT_DATE-
19650622
-TEXT-
CASTRO SPEAKS AT STOMATOLOGISTS' GRADUATION

Havana Domestic Television and Radio Services in Spanish 0241 GMT 19 June
1965--F

(Live Fidel Castro speech at the Chaplin Theater on the occasion of the
graduation of 90 stomatologists)

(Text) Comrade professors, comrade graduates, comrade students: This
graduation of 90 students of the Stomatology School is of special
importance to our country. That importance can be perfectly well deduced by
comparing data on this service from before the revolution with the present
situation. This does not mean that we have reached the goals for satisfying
our needs; not at all.

The state dental services before the triumph of the revolution, including
the Ministry of Public Health, the municipalities, charity institutions,
and scholastic hygiene, according to data provided by the ministry,
employed 250 dentists--stomatologists, I do not know how that escaped
me--10 hours per week, that is to say, 12.5 percent of the all the
stomatologists in the country. In addition, 87.5 percent worked in private
practice. The 250 stomatologists previously mentioned worked approximately
10 hours a week. At the first aid clinics, they performed extractions with
instruments and medicines of the lowest quality, and the stomatologist
worked alone. Assisting personnel? There were no dental assistants or any
other type of personnel.

Moreover, for the rural mountain population there was practically no
service. What there was, was performed by nonprofessional personnel; at
least, not university people. However, after the triumph of the revolution,
the rural dental service was established, bringing this type of assistance
to places that never had it before. And this service is both quantitative
and qualitative. A network of stomatological assistance was created, with a
total of 379 centers. Of these centers, 74 are in the rural service. In the
province of Oriente, which was one of those most in need, 34 centers were
established. Likewise, stomatological clinics were created, and today there
are 29 in operation. Seven more are under construction or already planned.
Also, there are three mobile units.

The stomatological personnel who now work in the Public Health Ministry
total 856, of whom 655 work 24 hours per week and 201 work 44 hours per
week. The country's stomatologists working in the social services now total
62 percent as compared to the 12.5 percent in the past.

In 1963, approximately 890,000 patients were cared for. In 1964, the figure
totaled 1.25 million. The characteristics of the services: First, equipment
and devices of ultrahigh velocity and dental X-rays in centers organized in
accordance with the principles of modern stomatology; second, orientation
toward preventive or curative odontology.

The character of the professions in the revolutionary period: gradual
integration of the stomatologists into the group for integral medical
assistance; collective work in the aid centers.

The character of the assistance is based on the preventive-educative
principle. Preventive: a) Study of the possibilities of fluoridating
drinking water to prevent dental caries; b) massive topical application of
sodium fluoride to the child population; c) health education plans to
increase the knowledge of the people concerning dental health--(Castro
pauses at this point to thumb through a stack of papers--ed.) another
section is misser here; d) increased consumption of milk (laughter), fish,
meat, eggs. That is part of prevention (laughter). Curative: First,
application of the principle of systematic care for students and workers;
second, expansion of our services in all fields of
stomatology--conservation odontology, orthodontia, prosthesis,
periodontics, dental surgery, and facial maxilla (Castro repeats "facial
maxilla" several times to himself, questioningly, and provokes
laughter--ed.); improvement and perfection of stomatologists and aide
personnel.

Creation of the National Institute for Stomatological Improvement, which
will begin to operate shortly; the first stage: As a center for the
training of stomatologists and specialists in the various fields of
stomatology; second stage: an institute for stomatological research, for
original research by our country. In order to have one stomatologist for
each 4,000 persons, the present requirement is for 1,900 stomatologists.
One presumes they are new. (Castro speaks to someone on the platform-- ed.)
No? Total? Four thousand times 1,900 is approximately the population of our
country.

Therefore, it is necessary to encourage our youth to study this field of
medical science in order to meet the minimum requirements within a period
of eight years. All this, the comrades of the ministry explain, requires
unity of action by all the organizations interested in this service,
principally expressed in the existing close links between the stomatology
schools of Havana and Santiago, Cuba, and the Public Health Ministry. This
report was made by Dr. Wilfredo Cordoba Diaz, head of the National
Stomatology Department of the Public Health Ministry. The use of the word
"dentist" here can be debated with them (laughter).

The number of graduates each year for the last 10 years; from 1952 to 1953,
91; 1953-54, 59 (Castro hesitates and repeats some figures to
himself--ed.); in 1955, another 59; in 1956, 58--it seems that there was no
graduation for some years--and in 1959, 53 graduated; in 1960, 61
graduated; in 1961, 52 were graduated--that is, in the course of from 1960
to 1961, but 1961 appears again with 40 more--in 1962, 20 were graduated;
in 1963, a group of 30 and a group of 18; in 1964, a group of 29. The total
of graduates in the last 10 years in 479. (figures as received--ed.).

In this course, 90 will graduate, and we understand that at the end of the
year another 26 will be graduated. This will be a total of 116, but then
there will not be another graduation until 1967 because of the changes in
the programs. In the old program, the total number of study hours for a
student was 4,212. In the present program it is 4,494. The average of
student hours in 10 American universities is 4,335.

The number of professors before 1959 was 21. After 1959, it has increased
to 57. The director of the school explained how the work is not only
theoretical now, but also practical, and 17,510 patients have been cared
for by the graduates who are being graduated today.

There has also been a change in the curriculum--that is the program. In the
previous plan, there were some courses, such as vital surgery, that were
optional. Now they were required. Infant odontology was optional; it is now
required. Periodontics was not a separate course, but was a part of another
course. It is now independent and with a broader scope. The same thing
happened with orthodontia; it was not followed in a practical way, but only
in a theoretical way; today it is treated both in clinical-practical and
theoretical-practical courses. There were no courses of stomatology in a
clinic; it is now a new course in the program. There is also historical
dialectical materialism, and they also study English, which they did not
study before--this shows that we do not have any prejudice against the
English language.

The immediate plans for the stomatology school: To increase the capacity of
the school from 70 students to 150 in 1966; to transform it into an
assistant teachers center. In the constitution of the party cells of 23
exemplary workers in this school, 19 of them were professors. That is to
say, of 23 exemplary workers, among those 23 workers there, 19 were
professors.

As you see, there is still a plan to fully satisfy all the needs in a
period of eight years between the two schools, that of Havana and that or
Oriente. This requires an annual enrollment--it says here--of some 150
students, for example, in the school of Havana for 1966. The fact that
presently the school enrollment is fuller, although it is not as much as is
needed and wanted, is because of the effort that is being made in this area
to awaken interest and cultivate the vocation of our student youth for this
branch of medicine.

In this case, because of lack of knowledge, of information, and a series of
other complicated factors, a greater interest in medicine developed. It was
even necessary in this instance to undertake a campaign among preuniversity
youth and to create preuniversity courses to full the schools. Naturally,
of those students that entered medical sciences, the majority preferred
medicine to stomatology. And of course, we cannot consider our medical
services completely satisfactory if the stomatological services are not
satisfactory too.

Aside from the direct benefits of these services to our citizens, there is
their indisputable relation to the general health of the individual.
Possibly the specialists in digestion and such fields can talk about how
many disorders are caused by deficient mastication. Also, you do not have
to be very familiar with this material to know that we constantly find
neurologists, oculists, and other specialists who, trying to find the cause
of an illness, many times discover it in the mouth. Suffice it to say, it
is an essential part of any ambitious and revolutionary health program.
Hence the need to continue expanding the effort to increase the number of
the students in the medical school as well as the number in the stomatology
school. And the efforts of all--the ministry, the school, the Education
Ministry, the Communist Youth, the student associations--will be required
so that a deficiency is not created in the development of university
professions in some of these essential fields.

Since the needs for university-level technicians are now many in
practically all fields, there is great competition in these fields.
Naturally, there are certain factors that cause some to be preferred over
others, but in many cases these imbalances are caused by lack of
information and lack of an explanation, and also by lack of certain
planning, within the framework of the possible, to try to guide the
vocations of our students along the lines of our needs. Not only the
university schools, but many other medium-level technical schools are
constantly requesting students. You can read in the papers about the
campaigns being carried out to acquire good registration in the vocational
teachers school, which hopes to get a registration of between 6,000 and
8,000 sixth-grade graduates. This means that one of the very important
institutions of the country, one of the services that has received special
attention from the revolution, is calling for students from the sixth
grade.

Then there are the technological agricultural institutes, which are also
calling for the registration of basic secondary school graduates, as well
as workers. If one were to depend only on the secondary school graduates
for the plans of the technological agricultural schools, which are very
large, those plans could not be carried out. That is why improvement
courses have been established for agricultural workers who have shown
themselves to be outstanding students, thanks to which a large program can
be carried out.

That means that, even before reaching the level of preuniversity education,
we find large contingents heading for those schools. The fishing schools,
for example, also want students from the sixth grade, eighth grade, and
basic secondary schools, because they need thousands of qualified
personnel--pilots, mechanics, and communications men, and an entire series
of skills which are indispensable for putting a modern fishing fleet into
operation. There are also the needs of the merchant marine. A modern vessel
is almost like a factory. It requires engineers, mechanics, pilots--in
short, a large number of technicians. All these activities are being
developed.

Until 1970, the requirements of the fishing industry call for between 8,000
and 10,000 persons, of whom several thousands are to meet technical needs.
Similarly, there are many branches of education that are absorbing a
considerable part of the students who graduate from the sixth grade or
secondary schools; and naturally, the great mass of students is only now
reaching the sixth grade after six years of revolution. The number of
primary students was about 600,000 before the revolution and the figure is
currently between 1.2 and 1.3 million. As the years pass, this great number
of youths will reach secondary and preuniversity education and all the
centers of technical and medium-level education. But at present, the
reservoir of students capable of satisfying our growing needs does not
exist.

In addition, the educational centers that will absorb that mass of young
students require a large number of secondary school and university
teachers. So many of our graduates from the technological centers and the
universities must be teachers. The universities need to get enough
professors, and naturally they should have the right to schools among the
best students who may have a talent for teaching. To train a graduate for
teaching is like planting a seed.

Preuniveristy and medium education will also need thousands of cadres. That
river is growing and, in turn, it requires more and more teaching
personnel. Also, the study programs must be more and more demanding all the
time. This situation becomes clearer all the time because the historical
shortcomings of our educational methods can be seen at the university
levels. All the historical gaps of our education are increasingly evident.
And the university professors, as they gain more experience, demand better
preparation of the students who arrive at the university; and this better
preparation must be received in secondary education. These are centers
that, in turn, demand better preparation from primary education.

There is still much to be analyzed and much to be clarified in this sense.
It is quite possible that in the coming years our educational institutions
will find it necessary to make basic studies of all the programs, although
naturally it would not be enough just to find deficiencies if there are no
means to overcome them. Without a doubt, each year we have in primary
education a greater number of extraordinarily well-prepared teachers. These
teachers go out after studying five years, starting in the vocational
school of Minas del Frio in the heart of the mountains in the Sierra
Maestra, but at the same time it will also be necessary to increase the
programs for training professors at the middle levels. In two words,
classrooms are needed for teachers. If we analyze the problem well, we will
arrive at the conclusion that our most important need today is to create
classrooms for teachers.

Concerning agriculture, which now occupies a large part of the effort of
our country, and which needs many technicians, practically all those who
graduate from the agricultural school are going to work as professors in
technical institutes in order to graduate thousands of technicians at a
secondary level. Some of these, for their part, as the products of rigorous
selection, will go on to study at the university on scholarships, and the
rest will continue increasing their higher education through correspondence
courses in science. In this way, over the years they also will be able to
obtain their engineering degrees while they are in production. It is
nothing to send 30 agricultural engineers into agriculture. This is a drop
of water in the desert. We need thousands, and we should satisfy this need
with technicians of a middle level. Because of this, we do not haggle over
any cadre for education. The experience of these years stresses
increasingly the improved work of our university, within our revolution and
aspirations, because we were a country that, in many branches of technology
and industry, lacked university level cadres, besides suffering
disproportions in the university and other problems in our universities.

Each day, the need for high-level technical cadres is more evident in all
fields, without exceptions. Naturally, in these we will even have to be
aided by foreign professors in several branches. There are some branches,
such as medicine, that are sufficiently developed to have been able to
amply satisfy their needs. Other branches, which were not at all developed,
completely lack professional cadres. Because of this, it is important that
the university be concerned with making selections among its best students
to satisfy these needs.

Every time that there is an attempt to do something in any field--and many
needs arise daily--we try to see what technicians exist in our country to
carry out certain tasks. But these technicians do not appear anywhere. They
do not exist. They have never existed. Moreover, this is not true only of
technicians at the university level. This is true in many other activities.
I cite the developing merchant marine or the fishing fleet, which did not
exist before in our country. It has a great shortage of qualified personnel
for its development. There are also factories in which 50 percent or less
of the workers are qualified.

In general, when you hear of the economic-industrial development of a
country, the classical economists and the press place much emphasis on the
problem of investments and little emphasis on the more serious problem of
an underdeveloped country, which is a lack of qualified workers and
technicians. There are factories that, if they had qualified workers, could
produce much more and of better quality. And there are factories, such as
the Matanzas nitrate fertilizer factory, where the comrades of the ministry
have been fighting for months to solve technical problems. We lack chemical
engineers.

Many other factories have this tremendous problem of a lack of qualified
personnel. The necessary stress is not placed on this problem when they
talk of a development program in international conferences. They are always
talking of loans, of money; but they do not talk of the real heart of the
matter, the most important thing, which is the technical training of the
people for a developed industry for a developed economy. Perhaps one of the
best things that the revolution has done is to give special attention to
this aspect. The fruits are visible in the large number of young and adult
citizen who are attending the schools and taking courses to increase their
knowledge.

But all this must have its point of climax in the university. It is like a
pyramid that must be built from the bottom up. The university must be given
more and more attention all the time, and the university must be given more
and more resources all the time, but not the resources of millions of
pesos; not only financial resources, but also resources in cadres,
educational equipment and materials, and human resources in general.
Because at first, judging from the old university problems, it seemed to be
essentially a problem of full-time professors and salaries, and that is
insignificant in comparison to another series of things that merit
attention in university education.

It should be said that the quality of university education has improved
extraordinarily with the revolution. It is very clear in some schools, but
in others, because of a lack of professors and educational materials, it is
not so evident. We have some schools of great importance, such as the
mechanical engineering school, that practically do not have any equipment
to work with--and they need professors, and so on.

It is necessary to work at giving the university a very precise definition
of its tasks and functions in accordance with what we want to do in coming
years. At first there was much spontaneity in the development of the
schools. Some were able to get the attention of many youths because much
was said about them. Others, of no little importance, got practically no
students, and that was the problem of the agricultural school; it was
really forgotten. There existed the contradiction of a country with
extraordinary possibilities and great needs, but there was no development
of its agricultural school, when it was growing clearer all this time that
the development of our agriculture depended on the application of modern
technology.

But there was much spontaneity. Thus did thousands of youths enter the
various schools. Thousands of youths went abroad to study without there
being (Castro fails to complete thought--ed.)--and there really could not
be, because for it to exist it was necessary for us to have had in those
years a very clear idea of what we should have done and how we should have
done it. Thousands of students went out to study abroad in various fields,
various careers.

This, of course, does not mean that it was a futile effort, for we have
many needs in absolutely all fields. However, the ideal would be to
establish an order, a certain order of priority, to have the clearest
possible idea of the needs and of the role each university career should
play in the life of our country, and, according to those needs, to try to
guide the vocations. Solution of these problems cannot be left to
spontaneity and whim alone.

In the field of vocations, that vocation which first passes through the
mind of a citizen is not always his real vocation. Many times, we find
fifth and sixth grade students and we ask them what they are going to
study. Many say: "Me? Airplane pilot." A large number of children who see
planes fly hope someday to an airplane pilot, too. Generally, I tell them:
"Well, and who will maintain these planes? And how are the people going to
feed themselves?"

Logically, that is the first inclination. If we were now to select for
pilots all those who want to be pilots, we would end up having tens of
thousands of pilots. It is logical that that is a phase. There are others
who, at a very early age, already speak with great fervor about something
specific that attracts them. Others find their vocations at secondary
schools, and others have not found them. Still others find it in
preuniversity education, and there are even students in first and second
years of preuniversity education who still do not entirely know what they
want to study. (Apparently someone says something to Castro--ed.) I said
preuniversity education. No? I did not say university; I said
preuniversity. Yes, there are preuniversity students who still do not know
what they want to study. That is to say, they have not yet found their
vocation. Many people thought they had a vocation. Many things are written
about vocations, and there are accounts of persons who have found their
vocations long after becoming adults. I believe someone wrote about the
question of vocations, and therefore the work of vocational guidance is
necessary.

And since, generally, not everyone is born with a special gift for certain
studies--there are a certain number of universal intelligences which can
select those studies according to the needs of the world in which they
live. They not only can do this, they should choose them because the
citizens of a country should try to do the best for their country. In the
long run it will be his. (Interrupts thought--ed.) It is necessary to guide
the professions. And coordination is needed between the centers of higher
educations and the planned organizations. Also, a great coordination is
needed between the centers of higher education and the lower level centers.
I believe that in the coming years we will have to dedicate much attention
to these problems in order not to waste time, not waste intelligence, not
waste resources.

We have a great advantage: making all the children study. We have a great
advantage over other countries which have not had the possibility, that
almost 100 percent of the children can go to school.

It will be necessary to continue conditions and facilities and give more
and more aid to education, as has been done, for instance, in some areas in
the mountains--as in Oriente, lashed by the hurricane, and even
nonmountainous areas where shoes are distributed free among the school
children. This has additionally brought on the great increase in attendance
of 90 percent. This has been brought about by better work by the
educational organizations.

The first internees in the mountain areas are not beginning to stay where
there are students who live a distance away. They come to school in the
morning and return home in the afternoon. They get free lunch. There are
some who go to school on Monday and return Friday because they live
farther. It will be necessary to set up many school cafeterias and give
more facilities to education. We must take advantage of this idea of
allowing all children in the country to go to school, in addition to the
adults.

If, after this, we can channel, in a manner most rational and useful to the
country, the great mass of youths and children into study, the benefits
will really be incalculable. Much is said about the paths of communism, but
there is still much to be studied, much to be meditated over, much to be
observed, and much to be learned about this. However, there is not the
slightest doubt that education and technology are essential
elements--perhaps the two most essential elements in the creation of a
communist society.

Technical education--The technology to create abundance, and education to
create and for the minds. Without abundance, there can be no communism.
Without technology, there can be no abundance. There can be primitive
communism, which is anachronistic (word indistinct). Without a trained
mind, there can be no communism--there can be abundance, but no communism.
There are capitalistic countries that are highly industrialized, with
technical capacities to produce abundance which, if distributed in
accordance with communistic policies, would facilitate the establishment of
this kind of society. However, there is no communism. There is squandering
and irrational utilization of resources, but there is no communism.

Hence, these two things, technology and the training of the mind--that is
why education is important. Educator facilities possibilities in the
material sense and at the same time facilitates them in a moral sense.
There is no doubt that advances are made. There is no doubt that it is a
great step forward for the new groups of physicians and stomatologists to
become trained and emerge from the university with an enthusiastic attitude
and desire to work for society, to work for the people; because in the last
analysis it is the people who foot the bills for training university
people.

No longer do we cope with that idea that went with a past system--of
working for oneself--the objective of the professional person, himself, and
not the people who are entitled to receive his services. When speaking of
emulations with much enthusiasm, they said that they were socialists and
that they would become communists. This is very well because it is
precisely among our youths that these aspirations and these (?ideals) must
take the deepest root.

We believe that we have a magnificent university youth. We believe that
their quality and their sense of responsibility, along with the rest of the
people, is increasing daily to the point that our student and youth
organizations can already grasp the fact that in the university, where the
technical and scientific vanguard of the country is to be formed, the
future intellect of the country is a right, but only a right for
revolutionaries.

Elementary schooling is now compulsory. Secondary schooling will also be
compulsory soon. No one will have the right to lag behind and go
unpunished; no one will be able to roam the streets without doing anything.
Everyone will have to study--as the duty of a citizen--up to secondary
school. This will be a right and a duty, and perhaps this requirement will
some day be extended to the preuniversity level. However, university
studies will not be compulsory, even though students will have a right to
them. Not everyone will have this right, but only those who are worthy
(applause).

Naturally, as not all citizens will end up by receiving university
schooling--at least as things look now--perhaps the future will show us
that compulsory university schooling is necessary. No one knows. Presently,
and above all in the future, we envision universities as educational
centers where selection of the best youths and best students is made. If
university studies were previously a right for those with the most
resources--and rarely were the poorest youths given an opportunity--in the
future it will have to be a right of the best, in the moral as well as the
intellectual sense of the word.

For some years, in some of the university schools, we will select from the
thousands and thousands of youths who are studying in the
agricultural-livestock- raising technological institutes. We think that one
out of every 20 will be selected to study at the university, in the
agricultural-livestock-raising school. The other graduates from the
institute will work in production and will take correspondence courses.
Naturally, the requirements for selection will be very stringent, and our
agricultural-livestock school will be attended by selected students,
without depriving the others from the opportunity to study. Naturally,
their grades must be analyzed according to much more rigorous criteria.

When that school is in full operation, the dean of the medical sciences
told Comrade Dorticos, you will have to work hard to compete in that school
and to win the first place in the university emulation. He told me that it
was a challenge. In fact, we should not show preference to any schools. If
we have taken greater interest in the medical school, we have done so
considering the services rendered by the doctors and stomatologists,
considering the tremendous needs of our people, our desires to meet these
needs, and on behalf of the struggle against the enemy, who tried to take
our doctors and stomatologists from us.

Though we can wait for some things--a factory--we cannot say the same of a
sick person. Health cannot wait for anything. Life cannot wait. Hence the
attention given to this school, the effort made--an effort greatly
compensated for by the results, greatly compensated for by the fact that
this school won first place in the emulation. However, as we are also going
to make an effort on behalf of the other schools--the technological school,
the agricultural-livestock-raising school, and all other university
schools--the medical and stomatology students will not be able to rest on
their laurels.

When we speak of making efforts and sacrifices for the university, we do so
with the idea that the university trains revolutionaries. If we do not
understand this idea well, our country will suffer the consequences in the
future. The influence exerted by university students, technicians, and
scientists on the life of the nation, and above all on the life of a new
society like the one we are creating, will be greater and greater, and to
the degree that we are able to educate first-rate intellectuals, we will
reap the benefits or we will suffer the consequences. We must develop these
intellectuals as a primary duty in the loftiest revolutionary spirit so
they may play the role that belongs to them.

The fact that the universities have been bulwarks of the revolution is very
satisfying and advantageous for our revolution, and so is the fact that the
revolution has been fully supported at the universities. Judging by class
origin, we could not expect so much revolutionary spirit from our
revolutionary youths, but fortunately, several factors played a role in
infusing revolutionary awareness among the university students.
Revolutionary spirit has acquired an extraordinary impetus. Conditions have
been created for that spirit to become more and more revolutionary, above
all to the degree in which the subjective factor effects the class origin
of the mass of the university students (applause). That is to say, peasant
and worker origin: those who are from the most humble segments in the
country now, with the revolution, have the opportunity to go to elementary,
secondary, technological, and preuniversity schools--the great possibility
that the humble segments in the country can already go to the university.
These circumstances give us the opportunity to shape our universities to
the image that we want to make--that we must create.

The university is still far from what we want it to become, but not because
of deficiencies in men nor because of shortcomings in those who have
exerted efforts to do the best possible, but because this must be the
result of a process.

Some university schools must become more than university schools. They must
become research centers. There are schools, such as those of juridicial
sciences, philosophy, and economy that must become less study centers but
basically research centers, because we have must to learn in all those
fields and there is nobody who can teach us. The knowledge to be acquired,
in many cases, is knowledge that must be acquired through research. The
students of political judicial sciences, who many times ask themselves
questions about the aspects of their function, have an immense field in
which to work, to give the country new concepts, new institutions. That can
only be accomplished by profound study, researching the reality of our
country. This will not appear in any textbook, nor will there be any
teacher capable of teaching it to them. However, the teachers can orient
them and go along with them, guiding them in research. The same thing will
happen in economy, philosophy, and other fields in which we must depart
from the purely abstract. Although in these we also need our basic
sciences, we also need our practical work; and what better laboratory is
there, what better field, than the reality of a country in the midst of a
revolution, a revolution for the establishment of a society which is
universally new because the socialist formation is relatively new and all
must contribute as much as they can to the solution of its problems? The
many problems to be resolved require dedication, serious profound study,
analysis, observation; and they require research and development.

To believe that all of this can be taught to us in an error, for there is
nobody who can teach it to us. To believe that we can find all this in a
textbook is an error, for no textbooks exist on these matters. Some efforts
have already been made in a school like that of economy, and some students
have said that in a month of research work, confronting problems, they have
learned as much as in three years of study in their school. The university
must train them in all areas. The training of a doctor is not the same as
that of an economist or that of a chemical engineer, or that of a
technician in judicial or political science. They are very different
things. Some paths are much clearer than others, and others are about to be
cleared. Well then, we need strong basic preparation, and strong basic
preparations must be implanted at all levels of education.

However, in some the need to create, resolve, and research, or if you
please research, create, and resolve--reversing the order--is much greater
in some areas than in others. While it is necessary to do research in the
field of medicine, there is much more to be researched in the field of
economy and politics. We say this analyzing the university institution as a
whole and observing the ever-increasing importance that it has the respect
to the future, with respect to the ever-increasing demands of our
needs--because of the ever more ambitious aspirations of our people.

It is not necessary to say that cultural levels will be raised in the
masses of the people and that they will be more demanding as times goes on.
They will be ever more capable of understanding and will be more in need of
learning. This means that in all activities of every type, material as well
as intellectual, nobody can lag behind. Those who lag behind will encounter
embarrassing situations in the future. If our writers lag behind, they will
find more every day that the people will read foreign authors. Fortunately,
there are many very good writers, because this is something of universal
character, universal property. If our journalists lag behind, we will have
people who are more and more prepared and more critical and more capable of
judging everything, ranging from editing to material content and depth.
While in past years journalism was an intermediate level faculty, or an
intermediate school, we believe that journalism should become a university
school; it should acquire university level in all its forms: written,
televised, radio, and moving pictures, for people who are more and more
educated will require satisfaction of increasing intellectual needs. It
will not be possible to get away with writing any superficialities.

We must all make efforts in all branches of knowledge and education. Our
needs are obvious. We mentioned journalism because it is a typical example.
What happened to journalism was practically the same thing that happened to
the agricultural-livestock school. Just as today, an extraordinary
contingent in embarking, through the agricultural-livestock institutes, on
that career, and by 1970--at this time we have nearly 10,000 students, and
within five years the number will be 30,000--we must make a special effort
in journalism. For several years, journalism has been going through various
crises, undergoing various incidents in the university. A faculty for it
must be created, and youths who have the vocation and ability must be
selected for it. The country has many means of incalculable value to form
consciousness and give technical training. We have radio, television, the
printed press, books, and moving pictures. What do we do with all this?
What must we do with all this? Well, using those means--which formerly were
ill-employed--in a proper manner, we may receive incalculable benefits for
the country. For this we also need trained personnel.

From now on, I repeat, the university--or universities--must receive ever-
increasing attention, and the education institutions must work in closer
and closer coordination.

How many doctors do we need? How many stomatologists? How many engineers?
How many teachers? Could anyone be able to answer that question? No. We can
answer that question in a limited fashion, in accordance with our needs.
However, the reality of the world today demonstrates that the bonds among
countries are inevitably greater every day, particularly among the
revolutionary and underdeveloped countries. A country like Algeria
heroically achieves its freedom and it needs doctors; and like Algeria,
many other countries need technical personnel. How many technicians do we
need? Simply as many as we may need and as many as other brother countries
may need (applause).

If we arrive at the application of mass education and arrive at the massive
training of technicians at all levels, how could we forget those countries
that still live in the midst of oppression, who live amid ignorance and
illiteracy? If, with 100 percent of our citizens knowing how to read and
write, with all our children having the opportunity of going to school, our
needs are great and will be for many years, how much greater must be the
needs of other countries where today 70 percent of the people do not know
how to write, or 50 or 40 percent? How much greater must the needs of other
countries be, where the number of doctors is not greater than 10, or 50, at
the most, among millions of inhabitants?

Imperialism and colonialism, among other things, obstructed the path to all
types of cultural and technical improvement of the exploited proples. Human
beings were treated like animals, as cheap labor. They could have had no
interest in developing the intelligence of those peoples. From what can be
seen, there will never be too many doctors, stomatologists, teachers,
engineers, or technicians of any type during the coming decades. That is
why, when we talk about how many we should train, we must always say that
we must train as many as possible.

In that manner, if 150 take up stomatology in 1966, we must try to enroll
200 or 250 in 1967, and 300, 400, and 1,000 when we are able. We will need
them all; and if we do not need them, others more needy than ourselves will
need them. We must prepare to fulfill our obligations to other countries.
Without this, our concept of human solidarity would be stopped within the
miniscule sphere of our national borders and our national interests. We
take this opportunity to point out these concerns, these preoccupations,
these possibilities, these obligations.

At the same time, we joyfully celebrate the presence of 90 new
stomatologists who are leaving for the field and the mountains, where we
are certain that the reality of life will show them better than words the
value of the service they are about to render--the importance of the work
that they will carry out in this world of need which never received
anything--the rivers of suffering and pain which they are going to
prevent--the infinite appreciation which their services will arouse
everywhere.

They are going to meet in the field and in the mountains with the doctors
and with teachers who have been working, teaching, and learning so
diligently, giving and receiving because they give of what they have and
they receive from that world this human warmth, this human recognition,
this human sense of their work. They will become identified with those whom
they will serve and help. From day to day, they will be building the
edifice of the future--the ideal of the future-- for a people who are sound
and healthy, happy! Where suffering will be eliminated as far as possible
through preventive and curative medicine, growing more preventive than
curative.

The emulation among the farmers and the medical men can extend farther than
the university, to fields of health also, to see who is more capable of
producing more health. Not only the doctors should unite, but those who
produce the food-- when I say doctors, I mean those attending the Medical
Sciences School--so that as time goes on health may be a natural state--as
(Huasan?) used to say, the normal state of men--and illness the exception.

If we analyze what has been done, we have many reasons to feel encouraged.
If we analyze what can be done, we will have even more reasons to feel
encouraged. We hail our comrades of today. They are leaving their
classrooms and will experience the immense satisfaction of a goal fulfilled
and of a goal that is about to start. We wish them success. We know that
the prize they will get in the measure of goods and services which they are
going to offer their fellow countrymen will be in the recognition of those
compatriots who will receive them with open arms, and in the recognition of
the entire people.

After you, we must make an effort to send more contingents, each time
greater in number. That is why today is a day of happiness for the
university population, particularly for this school, and also a day of joy
for the comrades in the Ministry of Public Health and for the doctors and
stomatologists who are receiving this reinforcement for the revolutionary
and humane work that they are carrying out.

Congratulations to all of the comrades who are graduating. Congratulations
to all comrades and professors, students and professors of the School of
Medical Sciences. Fatherland or death, we will win!
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