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Setting Up School Board Showdown, Committee Says Cuba Book Should Stay

Posted on: Monday, 5 June 2006, 18:00 CDT

By Matthew I. Pinzur, The Miami Herald

Jun. 5--A controversial children's book about Cuba should stay in school libraries, an advisory committee recommended today, almost certainly setting up a showdown this summer at the Miami-Dade School Board.

The 16-member panel debated for more than seven hours over two sessions, highlighting numerous omissions and a few possible inaccuracies in the book Vamos a Cuba and its English-language counterpart, A Visit To Cuba.

Ultimately, only one of those members -- child psychologist Lydia Usategui -- voted to remove the book, which opponents believe is an unreasonably sunny portrait of life under Fidel Castro. The majority of the panel -- which included educators, administrators and community members -- agreed the book was lacking in many areas, but found it sufficiently accurate and thorough to meet the needs of its kindergarten-through-second-grade audience.

"I don't think this book romanticizes modern Cuba at all," said John Doyle, a panel member and the district's director of social science curriculum.

The committee's decision was solely a recommendation to Superintendent Rudy Crew, who now has five days to issue a decision. He had hoped the committee could reach a compromise that would satisfy everyone -- such as a warning pasted in the book's cover -- but he has also intimated he would refuse any request to remove the book entirely.

Those statements prompted the committee's 17th member, state Rep. David Rivera, to resign from the committee moments before the vote, saying Superintendent Rudy Crew had undermined the committee with statements suggesting he would reject any recommendation to remove the book.

"I don't feel the process has been lent credibility," said Rivera, one of two community members Crew appointed to the panel. "I think it's been prejudged, predetermined and undermined."

He later called the process "a joke," saying the vast majority of the panel's members are district employees and ultimately report to Crew. The panel's composition is dictated by a long-standing School Board rule, but it left

Nearly 50 copies of Vamos a Cuba can be found in the district, almost entirely in elementary schools. The father of a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Elementary launched the original complaint, which was rejected by the school principal. A second appeal, to a school-based committee, met the same fate.

If Crew does indeed decide to keep the book, the final appeal is to the nine-member School Board itself -- forcing those elected officials into an ethnically and politically explosive debate just months before many of them face re-election.

The board could receive such an appeal as early as June 14, but more likely at its following scheduled meeting on July 12 or an emergency meeting called in the interim. District observers expect heated debate and a close vote.

"The whole community is watching this," said Usategui, who served on the panel in a spot Crew reserved for the Spanish American League Against Discrimination.

The book's rosy picture of Cuba, largely echoed in similar books from the same series about other countries, has come under fire for both incorrect statements and misleading context.

"We shouldn't be looking at what's accurate enough," said state Rep. David Rivera, one of the community members appointed to the panel by Crew. "I believe accuracy should be uncompromising."

Among the statements he considered inaccurate were:

-- A sentence describing the Cuban holiday on July 26th as "Carnival," the island's largest festival, marked by signing and dancing. Rivera and others said the day is solely a commemoration of Castro's revolution, never referred to as "carnival" and centered around speeches, not parties.

-- A page that describes paintings on rocks in a Cuban valley, which the book says were "made by people who lived in Cuba about 1,000 years ago." An analysis of the book written by Juan Clark, a professor emeritus at Miami Dade College, said the paintings were made in the 1960s.

There were also questions over the translations between the Spanish and English versions of the book.

But both Rivera and Usategui saved their more passionate objections for sections of the book they considered misleading, rather than inaccurate.

"It's very confusing, it distorts information and it's inaccurate," Usategui said.

Morro Castle, for example, is described as a 400-year-old fort built to protect the island from pirates. But it makes no mention of the political prisoners who Rivera said have been jailed and executed there over the last four decades.

A section on food mentions white rice as the most common food and arroz con pollo as a favorite dish, but does not discuss Cuba's shortages and strict rationing. And a section on Cuban people mentions Catholics and Africans who arrived on the island, but ignores Cuba's indigenous people.

"I don't think anyone would say this was adequate in depicting the life of Cuba," Rivera said.

The clear disagreement between the book's supporters and opponents on the panel was whether Vamos a Cuba should be judged by on its own accuracy or on its completeness in depicting Cuba.

Rivera also touched on the heightened sensitivity in South Florida toward all things Cuban.

"Cuba is not France or Greece or Mexico or Puerto Rico," he said. "Because of where we are, the Cuba book should be held to the highest standard."

MIAMIHERALD.COM: To read Matthew Pinzur's blog, Miami Gradebook: Inside South Florida Education, click on Today's Extras.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Miami Herald

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The Miami Herald

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