Special Education in Cuba: the book and the flower

By Liudmila Peña Herrera


Special Education in Cuba, has new motivations this year because we are celebrating 50 years of its creation. The birth of the Cuban Revolution with its ideals of equal rights for human beings, opened a new way for all people with disabilities.
In the case of children, adolescents and youth persons with special educational needs, the strength-and power-as inescapable priority, attention, education and protection.
The creation of specialized schools to encourage their development, parent training and family, availability of itinerant teachers for infants who can not attend school, are some of the actions that have been carried out during this half century.
Special Education in Cuba welcomes children with different special educational needs, such as: intellectual, sensory, visual, transient (behavior disorder and mental developmental delay), physical-motor, those related to the area of ​​communications and related to behavior. 
In the Holguin province there are about 30 educational institutions for different specialties, divided by different territories, and two Day Care Centers dedicated solely to these infants. Only in the capital city we can find several schools such us "Renato Guitart" (mental developmental delay), "The Golden Age" (for the blind, strabismus, amblyopia and deaf and hard of hearing), "Luis Escalona" (behavior disorders ), comprehensive training school "Calixto Garcia" (behavioral disorders) as well as others, among which include joint centers.
These finds of educational institutions Cuban students receive subjects to prepare them to safely integrate into society and their self-esteem rises, contributing to their intellectual and emotional development.
Special Education in Cuba will celebrate its half-century building on 4 January 2012. The country's authorities are striving to continue this work of love and solidarity, through which the Cuban Revolution showed to his people and everybody's transcendental that human beings learn and appreciate the knowledge and sensitivity, with a book and a flower in each hand.