Mendive. Revista de Educación, enero-marzo, 2022; 20(1):345-347

Book Presentation

Especial Education in Cuban. Present-day conception and perspectives

Educación Especial en Cuba. Concepción actual y perspectivas

Educação Especial em Cuba. Concepção atual e perspectivas

Yosniel Estévez Arias¹ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7401-8559

¹University of Pinar del Río "Hermanos Saíz Montes de Oca". Cuba. yosniel.estevez@upr.edu.cu

Bibliographic file

Triana Mederos, M and Fernández Silva, IF (2019). Special Education in Cuba. Current conception and perspectives.

Havana: Editorial People and Education.

ISBN: 978-959-13-3604-0.

The book Special Education in Cuba. Current conception and perspectives offers a panoramic vision of Special Education in Cuba, in correspondence with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and, in particular, with objective four aimed at guaranteeing inclusive, equitable and quality education and promoting permanent learning opportunities for everyone.

His considerations are based on the massive, equitable character of the right to Education, which Cuba advocates, with the active and democratic participation of the entire society in the tasks of educating the people. The gratuity and accessibility of all Cuban citizens to education is proverbial; issue that is in line with:

• The Constitution of the Republic of Cuba.
• ·The agreements, theses, resolutions and conferences of the congresses of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC).
• The VII Congress of the PCC and the Social Economic Guidelines 2016-2020 and the National Plan for Economic and Social Development until 2030.
• National Plans for the care of people with disabilities (2006-2015).
• The United Nations Development Assistance Framework in Cuba.
• The normative documents of the improvement of the Special Education subsystem.
• The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2015).
• The National Action Plan for the Care of Children, Adolescents and their Families. (2015-2020).
• Declaration of Salamanca (1994).

The central idea of the book is to offer the way of conceiving Special Education in Cuba, as a consequence of 59 years of experimentation and continuous improvement of its educational policy and practice and in correspondence with the systematization of the latest research carried out on the subject in question. .

The text reveals the importance of the aforementioned Education, with its modalities and specialized resources, aspects that are consistent with the psycho pedagogical diagnosis, the Special Olympics program and the achievement of an inclusive, equitable and quality education.

Among its main features are:

• It is written in a pleasant and understandable language, in nine sections, including family testimonies and bibliography. It has a total of 112 pages.
• The testimonies reflect the criteria of families with children who have a disability and who have been treated in any of the Special Education institutions in Cuba.
• The bibliography is extensive; depending on the date of publication it is updated and reflects the studies carried out by specialists on the subject, in the national and international field.
• Part of a sketch on the regulations of the 2030 Agenda and the role of Special Education in achieving inclusive Education, which allows proposing positions related to recursion in educational care, psycho pedagogical diagnosis and the importance of the Special Olympics .
• Its content highlights the transversal nature of Special Education with respect to the rest of the subsystems of the National Education System. In this way, the character of a resource and support center for Special Education is accentuated.
• It emphasizes the nature of Intersectoriality, involving the participation of the different sectors involved in the comprehensive care of students with special educational needs, aspects that are consistent with networking.
• It highlights the preventive, corrective and compensatory work based on the psycho pedagogical diagnosis of children, adolescents and young people with special educational needs and the subjects and contexts in which it is developed.
• It achieves the unity of pedagogical theory and practice, encouraging readers to delve into each topic and find solutions to real problems in different contexts.

The work has the following content index:

• 2030 Agenda and Special Education. Towards a more inclusive education.
• On the current conception of Special Education in Cuba. Starting positions.
• Special Education in Cuba, its modalities and specialized resources for educational attention.
• Educational inclusion in Cuba.
• Psycho pedagogical diagnosis and Special Education. Implications for quality educational care.
• Psycho pedagogical diagnosis and educational inclusion of children, adolescents and young people with special educational needs.
• Special Olympics and Special Education. Complementary relations.
• Testimonials.

The contents of the book clearly reflect the position assumed by the Cuban educational system in the face of the challenge of achieving inclusive and quality education, precisely defining the Cuban position (optimistic, humanist, Martian and Fidelist) in education and development of people with special educational needs.

The book constitutes a valuable reference material for teachers who are in charge of professional pedagogical training in universities, for education professionals and for teachers in training. It is also an updated reference on Cuban Special Education in the context of inclusive education.

This work is under a licencia de Creative Commons Reconocimiento-NoComercial 4.0 Internacional
Copyright (c) Yosniel Estévez Arias