The Lesson Taught Outside
HAVANA TIMES — Every morning, before they enter the school, the children receive their first lesson. It is a lesson that is not written on the blackboard, does not appear in their textbooks, and is not taught by a teacher. It is right in front of them: a mountain of garbage.
From my house I can see the school. I see it every day: children arriving with their backpacks, parents walking them to the entrance, teachers coming in early to begin another day of learning. But I also see something else. The garbage dumps. One on one corner, another farther down, and then another. Sometimes they seem to multiply. They change shape, grow, shrink a little, and then reappear. They become part of the landscape, as if they had always been there. And perhaps that is the most troubling part: something that should cause alarm eventually seems normal.
Inside the school, they talk about values. Children are taught respect, responsibility, and caring for their surroundings. They are told that they must protect the places where they live, and that cleanliness also reflects a person’s upbringing. But outside, right in front of the door where they learn those lessons, reality delivers a different message.
The smell is there. Insects appear. Animals rummage through the trash. And the children, still so young, have to live with an image that should not be part of their daily routine. It is not just an aesthetic problem. It is not simply that the street looks ugly.
It is a matter of public health, of habits, of the relationship a society builds with its own public spaces. Because children learn from books, but they also learn from what they see. They learn from what adults allow. They learn from what becomes part of everyday life.
The entire city bears visible wounds. Street corners where garbage piles up, streets that have been neglected, places where decay seems to have gained the upper hand. But there are spaces that deserve greater protection. A school is one of them, because a school is not just a building. It is the place where a generation learns how to see the world.
And it is difficult to explain to children that they should care for their surroundings when the surroundings before them seem to say exactly the opposite. For now, in June, the school year has ended.
Perhaps one day they will remember their first years of school because of their teachers, their friends, or the books they discovered. But they will also remember the image that greeted them every morning: a school where they learned values, and a street where, outside, a different lesson was being taught.