One of the more unsettling economic development models of the post-1989 era is found in China, where an authoritarian government which brooks no political dissent is combined with an economy that is as close to laissez-faire capitalism as any in today’s world. It is not an uncommon sight to see in the courtyard of Chinese schools blackboards on which the “merit pay” of individual teachers is calculated, based on such measures as student attendance and student test scores.
It now appears that post-Fidel Cuba is headed down the same road. Far from being a harbinger of the future of global education, with American public schools lagging behind, Cuba’s experiments with such systems of pay would be better understood as a telling illustration of how easily authoritarian, ostensibly Communist regimes make their peace with privatization and unfettered markets. Not so organizing free and independent unions, which have been the bulwark of democratization from Poland’s Solidarnösc to South Africa’s COSATU, and thus continues to be the surest road to prison in the newest emerging laissez-faire market paradise of Cuba.
