Posts Tagged ‘academia’
Why am I in college?
Cuba is the only country in Latin America that chose a different path to try to achieve national independence, sovereignty, and political and economic development. Cuba did so through a popular nationalist revolution that swept away a bureaucratic authoritarian, dictatorial, praetorian, repressive, and corrupt regime. How has Cuba’s different approach to national, political, and economic development shaped the current Cuban reality. How has neo-imperialism hindered Cuba’s development?
This is from the study guide. I already had doubts about the amount of trust I could put in this class; the professor claims that import substitution industrialization was fundamentally flawed and a complete and utter failure, whereas other sources say that it had some success in larger, more populous countries, that it may have reached a larger degree of success with international trade agreements among Latin American countries, and that its failure compared with the Asian export-driven model was due in part to the USA’s Cold War policy of heavily promoting capitalist development in Asia. But this particular bit seems… I don’t know, maybe a bit over the top? Out of all the things that have hindered Cuba’s development (possibly including its reliance on an economic model that has literally never succeeded), the one thing that gets singled out is neoimperialism?
But it gets even better. The professor for this class is the head of the political science department.
I am a product of the public school system. I have spent enough time in that particular conditioning facility that I am used to mindlessly regurgitating the expected answers. And yet, I find myself questioning my ability to do that here; the disparity between the expected answers and the answers that I find is large enough that I would have to completely shut myself off from outside information in order to ensure that no crimethink slips into my regurgitations.
Why do I subject myself to an institution that cannot even live up to its stated purpose?
