Cuba's lessons on caring for children 
By Larry Fish, Michael Yogman, Lou Casagrande, 3/11/2002 
IF THERE IS one society in North or South America where President Bush's goal to leave no child behind is a reality, it can be found in Cuba, 90 miles off the Florida coast in one of the few remaining communist states in the world. That is the conclusion of 24 Bostonians who just returned from a week in Cuba where we focused on how Cuba raises and nurtures its kids. 
The trip was organized by The Children's Museum of Boston for its trustees. Our group consisted of bankers and doctors, venture capitalists and television producers, teachers and journalists, real estate and business executives, museum staff and social service providers. Our goal was to see whether Boston could learn anything from Cuba, particularly with regard to caring for children and fostering their development through the arts.
With one exception, a high-tech executive who grew up in Cuba and left with his family when the revolution came in 1959, we were not and are not now old Cuba hands. Also, we were not and are not blind to the shortcomings of a command economy where many of the freedoms and opportunities we enjoy are so clearly lacking.
Every member of our group has benefited from and thrived in the American system of capitalism and democracy. Our ranks included several experts in capital formation who could see the desperate need for new housing and investment in an infrastructure that has been languishing badly for 40 years.
But during the trip, we spent several days visiting schools, preschools, community centers, and museums where kids were studying music, art, theater, and dance. We saw kids at day care centers and after-school programs. We visited a health care clinic where we learned about the neighborhood health system where each doctor in Cuba is responsible for approximately 100 households or roughly 700 patients.
We learned of a rationing system where there can be shortages of food and water, but children up to age 7 get first dibs on milk and pregnant mothers get to cut to the front of long lines for ice cream. We learned of year-long maternity leaves at 60 percent pay, universal preschool and day care that starts at age 1 for any family that wants it (and most do), universal access to free pediatric care, and after-school ''interest circles'' for school age kids that provide year-long workshops in art, music, environmental education, dance, sports, cultural patrimony, and historic renovation at local cultural institutions.
Even the clean uniforms that all school children wear made sense, cutting down on the inevitable petty jealousies that clothes and status evoke and giving even the poorest children a clean outfit to wear to school each day.
It must be pointed out that being in a communist country, we were only allowed to visit those schools and facilities that the government had given us approval to visit through our tour guide. We have no way of knowing for sure whether all such programs in Cuba are as good as those we saw. We also ran into occasional begging on the street by children and even some youthful pickpockets at the baseball stadium in Havana.
But the notion that children and education are of primary concern to Cuba was said often enough by enough people within and outside the government that it made us think that Boston, and indeed the United States, could learn much from this island of scarce resources. If Cuba, where per capita GDP hovers at $1,700, has universal preschool, isn't that something the wealthiest country in the world could do for its children and families?
If all 28 museums in the colonial houses of old Havana have workspace for children and after-school programs consistent with each museum's mission, couldn't our incredibly diverse and rich cultural institutions do the same in Boston?
Think of how our children could connect with Boston's rich heritage if the Old South Meeting House, the Museum of Afro-American History, Paul Revere House, as well as the Museum of Fine Arts, The Children's Museum, and the other downtown cultural institutions offered all of Boston's children free access to year-long programs during out-of-school time. Think of how our children could grow up dedicated to preserving our sparkling clean harbor and precious old buildings if they learned to cherish this heritage through daily contact with these places and the adults who work there.
Cuba is vastly different now than it was just a few years ago. Two million tourists annually are now washing through the Cuban economy, half from Canada and 200,000 from the United States. Tourism has replaced sugar as the single largest component of the Cuban economy, and there are hundreds of new businesses that have opened up, including many joint ventures with several US allies.
Our relations with Cuba will inevitably be normalized in due course, and we, too, will find economic opportunities in this well-educated, healthy society of 11 million. Yet the question is, will Cuba be able to maintain its commitment to children, their education, and their health as this economic activity builds and a growing dollar economy, existing side by side with a peso economy, creates disparities in wealth? Let's hope it can and that as more Americans visit Cuba's shores, we can learn something from the Cubans - about how to raise our kids here, how to instill in them self-respect and cultural pride, and how to give all of them a chance to be happy, creative, and productive adults.
Larry Fish is chairman, president, and CEO of Citizens Financial Group Inc. Dr. Michael Yogman is a pediatrician in Cambridge. Lou Casagrande is president of the Boston Children's Museum.
This story ran on page A15 of the Boston Globe on 3/11/2002.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.