-DATE-
19710916
-YEAR-
1971
-DOCUMENT_TYPE-
APPEARANCE
-AUTHOR-
F. CASTRO
-HEADLINE-
VISIT TO MENSESE SCHOOL
-PLACE-
PRIMARY SCHOOL IN NORTHERN LAS VILLAS PROVINCE
-SOURCE-
HAVANA DOMESTIC SERVICE
-REPORT_NBR-
FBIS
-REPORT_DATE-
19710916
-TEXT-
FIDEL CASTRO VISIT TO MENESES SCHOOL REPORTED

Havana Domestic Service in Spanish 1902 GMT 16 Sep 71 F

[Excerpt] The first secretary of the Cuban Communist Party [PCC] and prime
minister of the Revolutionary Government, Maj Fidel Castro Ruz yesterday
visited the recently inaugurated primary school in northern Las Villas
Province. Fidel Castro described the school as the best center for primary
education because of the number of installations, facilities, the area it
occupies, and the construction quality of the buildings.

Fidel Castro was applauded and cheered by hundreds of local residents who
gathered outside the principal school building as soon as his presence in
town was learned. Our commander in chief was accompanied by PCC Central
Committeemen Education Minister Belarmino Castillas Mas and PCC First
Secretary for Las Villas Province Arnaldo Milian Castro.

The Meneses school center has an enrollment capacity of 500 primary pupils
and has been named Heroes de Yaguajay, in honor of Maj Camilo Cienfuegos
who had promised the town residents a new school. The prime minister
greeted the parents of Camilo Cienfuegos, Emilia Gorriaran and Ramon
Cienfuegos, who were also invited to the school by the pupils and teachers.

In his tour of the school, Fidel Castro chatted with school principal
Natalia Diaz Marquez and several teachers. He also chatted with the pupils
and expressed interest in the curriculum and the program of activities
under way in the school since 7 September when it was inaugurated.

Fidel Castro suggested that an area of 2 caballerias next to the school
should be set aside for the planting of vegetables and fruits and that the
land should be worked by the school children themselves. Fidel Castro also
said that teachers and school employees should also work the farmland,
thereby creating production-mindedness among the schoolchildren as well as
getting them to maintain their own school.

Chatting with local area peasants, Fidel Castro recalled a visit he once
made to Meneses. He said that about 3 years ago he was told that Camilo had
promised a school to them and that the revolution still had not kept the
promise. He stressed that everybody was very busy on sugarcane planting in
those days and that it was not easy to build a school in Meneses.

Fidel Castro said that the local residents should feel proud of the school
in which their children are now studying. He asked them: "What type of
youth do you want educated here? What type of new generation? A
well-educated generation of workers and communists. If we want such a
generation we must educate them in a way different than the way we were all
educated. We must struggle," Fidel Castro added, "to make sure that there
is no crime in the society of the future. We must struggle to see that
there is no loafing in the society of the future, that there is no shirking
of work, nor disloyalty, lying, parasitism, selfishness, or the lack of
solidarity with the rest."

Our prime minister said that our country needs 2,500 schools similar to the
Meneses school. He said that there are 1.7 million primary schoolchildren
going to schools lacking such features. He said that there are now more
than 20 brigades building junior high schools and that there will be 30
organized by year's end.
-END-