-DATE-
19740131
-YEAR-
1974
-DOCUMENT_TYPE-
SPEECH
-AUTHOR-
F. CASTRO
-HEADLINE-
DEDICATION OF LENIN VOCATIONAL SCHOOL OF CALABAZ
-PLACE-
CALABAZAR, HAVANA PROVINCE
-SOURCE-
HAVANA DOMESTIC RADIO
-REPORT_NBR-
FBIS
-REPORT_DATE-
19740201
-TEXT-
Castro Speech

Havana Domestic Radio/Television Services in Spanish 2225 GMT 31 Jan 74 F

[Speech read by Cuban Premier Fidel Castro at the dedication ceremony of
the Lenin Vocational School of Calabazar, Havana Province on the occasion
of CPSU General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev's visit to Cuba live]

[Text] Dear Comrade Leonid I. Brezhnev; dear Soviet friends; dear Cuban
friends:

For the pact several years our people have been making enormous efforts in
school construction. Every school year approximately 30,000 openings become
available for intermediate level students on scholarships. Our educational
concept is based on Marx and Marti's principle of combining study with
work.

Today we are building basic secondary schools and preuniversity institutes
in the countryside where the students work 3 hours per day in agricultural
programs; polytechnic schools and technological Institutes near factors,
where the students work 4 hours per day in the industrial shops; and
primary level teacher-training schools in all regions of the country, where
the youths who are studying to become teachers carry out their practice
teaching in the nearby schools.

We also are developing universities, where the principle of study combined
with work is also implemented--the students participate in productive
activities 20 hours per week. As we stated last 29 January doing the
Cuban-Soviet friendship event, today all the country's children are
attending school, and the promotions as well as the quality of education
improves from year to year.

This school which we are dedicating today is of the type called vocational.
The students are admitted here after a rigorous selection based on the high
grades that they have received in primary school and in the school record.
Seven schools of this type will be built in the country where 25,000
students will study. At the present time, construction of a school [of this
type] has begun in Las Villas Province, another in Camaguey Province and
another in Oriente Province. They will bear the names of Lenin, Marx,
Engels, Marti, Maceo, Gomez and Che. [applause]

This school has a capacity of 4,500 students. It has as its educational
facilities: 78 classrooms, 14 physics laboratories, 10 chemistry
laboratories, 13 biology laboratories, 8 language laboratories, 3 art
rooms, 3 educational workshops, 2 amphitheaters, one all-purpose hall, a
closed circuit television system, a computer center, 7 assembly halls, 28
offices for professors--some equipment for these activities is still
missing.

Regarding sports installations, the school has 10 volleyball and baskethall
courts; one small-sized baskethall court; one double-sized volleyball court
3 baseball fields; 3 small-sized soccer fields; 2 outdoor gymnasiums; one
indoor gymnasium which has facilities for judo, wrestling, baskethall,
gynmastics modern gymnastics and weight lifting; 2 tennis courts; 2 olympic
pools; 1 deepwater pool; 1 official track field with inner soccer field and
2 high jump pits; 3 jump pits--triple, long range jump and fault jump; 1
fencing hall, 11 ping-pong and miscellaneous table gas halls and 5 chess
halls.

Regarding cultural installations, it has one movie theater with a capacity
of 450 persons and equipped for presenting small dramas or musical events,
two dance halls with wooden floors, two classrooms for plastic arts with
work benches and closets, two acoustically equipped classrooms for choir
practice four equally equipped classrooms for music and musical groups two
theater classrooms, one hall for the school band, five halls with
radio/record player units. In addition, it will have an assembly shop which
will produce 300,000 radios annually, as part of the plant which is being
built with USSR aid, one minisized computer factory which will be built
with Bolgarian collaboration, one battery factory, one assembly shop with a
capacity for 50 computers annually and shops for the manufacture of
sporting goods.

In the current school term the school is manufacturing 30 computers, 50,000
radios and tens of thousands of sporting goods items. Bending the
construction of the permanent industrial shops, the school has 500 hectares
of surrounding land which is being used to produce vegetables and where a
large majority of the students carry cut their productive activities. The
students graduating from this school will continue their studies mainly in
scientific and technical careers.

Truly, in no American country, including the cited States, is there a
secondary level school such as this one. [applause] It was built in 2
years, which we can call record time. Our construction workers toiled
without rest in order to complete it in accordance with plans. To them, we
wish to express our gratitude, and recognition. [applause]

If our fatherland today can devote its peaceful work to achievements such
as this one for the education of our youth and for the benefit of present
and future generations, it is due largely to the generous and fraternal
assistance it has received from the Soviet Union. [applause] Our country
does not devote its energy in superficial or luxury expenditures. It
devotes it fully to economic development, health, education, culture,
social progress and the defense of the socialist fatherland.

Our people work for today, but they work even harder for the future. Our
youth will be educated in the firm and pure principles of communism,
socialist patriotism and proletarian internatlonalism. [applause]

With eternal love and profound gratitude we dedicate this school to the
memory of Vladimir Ilich Lenin, [applause] the genial revolutionary leader
and founder of the first socialist state in the history of mankind. For the
bright paths that he opened for man's future, for the outstanding services
that he rendered the world, for the decisive assistance that the fraternal
and internationalist state founded by him has given and for what his
thought, his life and his example represent for revolutionaries on earth,
this school, this pride of our people will bear his immortal name.
[applause]

Dear Comrade Brezhnev, during long months the teachers workers and students
of this school and the construction, worker's have made great efforts by
day and night in order that not a single thing was lacking, not even a leaf
on the trees in the greenery surrounding it, on tree occasion of your visit
and in order to receive you with the great love that you deserve as general
secretary of the Central Committee of the glorious Communist Party of the
Soviet Union, [applause] for your courageous struggle for world peace, for
your loyalty to the Leninist principles and for your feelings of friendship
and affection for our revolutionary fatherland.

It is a great honor and a grand occasion of happiness and pleasure for all
of us that this school bearing the brilliant and honorable name of Lenin is
dedicated by you, who today holds Lenin's honorable post in the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union. [applause]

Eternal glory to Vladimir Ilich Lenin! Long live the inviolable friendship
between Cuba and the USSR! Fatherland or death, we shall win!
-END-