Herald Staff Report

HAVANA -- For years, Lupe and Rafael, a Havana couple, have plotted a way to keep their son away from Cuba's farm schools.

They think they've found the answer in sports.

Like other young people in Cuba, their 12-year-old son, Alejandro, faces the prospect of short stints at a boarding school in the country starting this year, and of full school years in the escuelas en el campo -- schools in the countryside -- after he turns 15.

But Lupe and Rafael, who asked not to be fully identified, are adamant about keeping him close to home. They hope his swimming will do the job by landing him on a team that trains in Havana with the government's blessing.

Teenagers need to live close to their parents, not on a farm where they are exposed to bad habits, an immoral lifestyle and terrible living conditions to get a mediocre education, they said.

``When you're a teenager, things get so confusing that parents must always be there,'' Lupe said.

The couple echoes a sentiment shared by many Cubans about the schools in the countryside, which combine work in the fields with schoolwork and political indoctrination.

Pope John Paul II's visit to Cuba in January gave critics a renewed hope that authorities will consider alternatives.

``The family, the school and the church must form an educational community,'' John Paul said during his first Mass in Santa Clara, ``in which the children of Cuba can `grow in humanity.' Do not be afraid. Open your families and schools to the values of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which are never a threat to any social project.''

The Pope's words reinforced what parents and academicians have been telling education officials for years, said a Havana college professor who asked not to be identified: Farm schools hurt families.

Study after study has criticized many aspects of the schools, the professor said. They lack everything from nutritious food and soap to decent libraries and cultural events. Many parents devote scarce resources to making up for the schools' inadequacies and keeping in touch with their children on the few days they can see them each month. But they often lose control over them anyway.

Schools described

The professor painted the following picture of the schools:

Instead of discovering the joys of work and learning, students end up hating the forced labor and meaningless education. Teachers are often few and inexperienced. Under minimal supervision, students bask in their newfound freedom, often falling into a world of casual sex and petty crime.

``Many don't even have a ball to play with, so boredom feeds promiscuity,'' the professor said. ``There is a void in values, and sexual relations turn into a way of having fun, without any responsibility or feelings, something animal-like.''

Like many other churches, Nuestra Señora del Carmen in Havana lost a parochial school to the revolution and yearns to have it back.

The Rev. Agustin Fernandez Blanco, a priest there, said the church could provide Cuban children with an upbringing totally different from the education they get from the government, particularly in the schools away from home -- from more books to more values.

``Teens would have a totally different view of life,'' he said.

Concerns of parents

Fernandez often hears parents' complaints about the farm schools undermining their roles in their teens' lives and eroding their Roman Catholic upbringing.

``They have a negative image, that their children get perverted,'' he said. Parents fear that their daughters will get pregnant, that their kids will turn unruly. Believers also worry about their children no longer going to church or catechism classes out in the country, he said.

Fernandez hopes the government will soon start talking with the church about a greater role in education, but he doubts that authorities will go as far as allowing parochial schools anytime soon.

So does a member of Fernandez's congregation, a woman who asked to be identified only as Maria. Her daughter, 16-year-old Lourdes, attends a school in the Havana countryside for future teachers.

Maria counts on her daughter's Catholic upbringing, their close relationship and frequent visits to keep Lourdes from falling into the traps she sees in the farm schools.

But already, Lourdes' manners and way of talking have changed. She has become more aggressive, and her grades have dropped.

`A tough argument'

Maria chats with her daughter often about what happens at the school -- say, the last girl who sneaked a boy into her room. She also spends hours selling the value of education to her daughter. It's a tough argument these days in Cuba, where college graduates and laborers may earn equal salaries, she said.

``She asks me, `Why should I study?' That's what all the kids say,'' said Maria, a biochemist who earns 280 pesos a month. ``But I try to tell her, `Look, honey, it won't always be this way.' ''

Maria doesn't expect swift changes in the education system, however.

``In the meantime, my tongue falls off from talking to her so much, and I spend a fortune on bus rides and food for her,'' she said.

Economics may push Cuban authorities to open up the school system, creating an opportunity for the church to play a role, said Margaret Crahan, a professor of religion and politics in Latin America at City University of New York.

``The government may be looking at sending young people to school in the countryside as very difficult to maintain economically,'' she said.

Major changes unlikely

Marifeli Perez-Stable, a sociology professor at the State University of New York, envisions perhaps minor changes, such as periods during which students in Cuban schools can voluntarily study the Bible. But changing a whole educational bureaucracy would take ``blood, sweat and tears'' in Cuba -- as it would anywhere else, she said.

Reforms to the farm schools, a brainchild of President Fidel Castro, may be particularly difficult, she added.

``If you withdraw the project, it would be yet another failure of the comandante.''

Lupe, the young swimmer's mother, has a plan of her own. She said she was so traumatized by the farm school experience, which included a teacher's attempt to molest her, that she finally managed to get excused from the program and return home to Havana.

She and her husband hope that as a star swimmer, Alejandro will be able to avoid the farm school. So every morning at 5, he dips into a cold pool for practice.

Lately, Alejandro has talked about quitting the program. But his parents insist that he stick with it, for his future's sake.

``We're struggling,'' Lupe said, ``so he will be a good athlete, disciplined, a good swimmer.''

``No child,'' added her husband, ``can benefit at that age by living on his own.''