By: Maria Aguirre
It’s hard to start a blog about a topic that I find so delicate to talk about, because it directly affects about 12 million Cubans. This blog aims to discuss internet censorship in Cuba and its effects on education. Cuba is a country with one of the highest levels of educational attainment in the world. Education is provided nationally, for free by the socialist government. Conversely, students and the rest of the Cuban citizens have been constantly and increasingly censored in their internet access. So, whether you’re a college student, a teenager, a young or old person, whether you live in the U.S. or in Australia, consider the possible impacts of limited access to information (e.g., in politics, news, or entertainment). Would you be a different student? Would you think the same as you do know about government agencies, historical characters, or current events? I invite you to read my blog reflect as I elaborate on this and other related topics.
Cuba is a beautiful Caribbean country of about 12 million people. Under a dictatorship of nearly five decades, Cuba remains as a socialist state. All the services and products, including education, are supplied by the government. And although highly criticized by the international arena, Cuba has a literacy rate of 99.8% (for population aged 15-24 years. Source: MDGs indicators). Yet, Cuban students and the general population are unhappy with the extensive internet censorship that the government has been applying since internet was introduced in the country. So may seem like an everyday normal thing to us in the US, like sending emails, googling, or even tweetting, is a privileged activity for ordinary Cuban citizens. Control is not limited to internet usage, but also the access, purchase or leasing of computers. This is manifested in the staggeringly low ratio: only 3.3 per 100 people own a computer, one of the lowest levels in the world.
Although the government is more lenient in providing access to information for educational purposes -allowing the use of certain computers and programs- others view this “special” availability as a tool to maintain social control over the available knowledge. Under this scheme, Cuba has become one of the most backward countries in internet usage with less than 2 percent of its population online. This web protectionism is based on the governmental excuse to ensure that the internet will not be used in a revolutionary way. For this reason, the authorities have a system of control and surveillance, which to the present day remains an enigma to the Cubans and to the rest of the world, because nobody knows exactly how this monitoring is carried out. This uncertainty and state control promotes nothing but a massive state of alert and fear for the Cuban cyber users. Yet, this hegemonic control of the internet in Cuba is double-sided. First, tourists in Cuba have a greater opportunity to use internet, being able to use the “international” less-censored sites available in their hotels. And second, because among Cubans there is a social class that has privileged internet access from their homes; they enjoy less control and surveillance, because they are thought not to represent any political risk. This particular division in the internet usage along with a centralized management of power has led to a repeated censorship, intimidating and stigmatizing people who think differently in Cuba.
Yoani Sanchez, is a 35-year-old mother, a wife, a philologist, a writer, a blogger, and considered as many, a leader in terms of internet censorship in Cuba. She has asked for hackers worldwide to help 12 million Cubans that are in need of the free usage of internet (Watch interview in Spanish). Ms. Sanchez tries to describe how her generation remains in the dark; so close, yet so far from the light of information and knowledge freedom. What the government calls “cyber-garbage” a group of students, journalists, and ordinary people fight for the same purpose. Remarkably, this resistance has won important small victories: Ms. Sanchez has been recognized by the former President Jimmy Carter, President Obama, and in 2008 by the Time magazine who included her in the list of 100 most influential people in the world.
However, along these small victories, the government counters attacks with a constant censoring of online content containing what they interpret as subversive and revolutionary words. This constant surveillance, in Ms. Sanchez’s words, leads to the Cubans feeling “… as if we’re abandoned and motionless by the side of the expressway, with ever faster and speeding kilobytes unattainable to us”. While the government maintains the position that internet usage is limited to academics, students and government workers, I ask, is it really that helping to educational purposes? I tend to think that they might be biased to restrict knowledge and what is taught. Especially if the students do not have access –as almost the rest of the world does- to one source that can be really helpful. Such questions lead me to think that in reality, the government does limits the type of knowledge available to educational motives, because the internet can be perceived as a threat to destroy the system. This protectionism is reflected in “in vitro versions of Facebook or Wikipedia style sites to schools and workplaces”; to achieve this, the government spends thousands of dollars to create controlled programs and interfaces for local use.
After an extensive search in the web, in both local and alternative sources, I can say that few media outlets are covering this topic: internet censorship and education in Cuba. After writing this blog I think that the question remains current, because although Cuba has an almost ideal literacy rates, there isn’t a test that asks the students about current issues, different perspectives or alternative thinking, which can really nurturing to the process of building critical skills. The truth is hardly ever matter of one and only one thing, and is often misinterpreted from analyzing when only perspective is considered. Then, do Cuban students (and the Cuban general population) have the right to know the other side of the coin? I think they do!
Sources and Footnotes:
“It’s not my job to really understand what they’re going to use it for.”- an HP executive.
By Fatima Tuz Zahra
I knew about the Internet censorship in China but did not quite know the breadth and depth of the issue until my Chinese friends at Penn told me that Facebook, You tube, Twitter are banned in China. I dedicate this week’s entry on the Internet censorship in China and the role of Western corporations to my Chinese friends.
York questions the business ethics of Western tech companies in China
The article by Jillian C. York in Aljazeera points out that China’s extreme Internet censorship repressing its citizens and small political groups is possible because of the creation of the “Great Firewall in China.” The surveillance tools that have gone into making the Great Firewall have actually been built by American tech corporations. Though multi-stakeholder schemes such as Global Network Initiative and Global Business Initiative for Human Rights uphold the established codes of behavior for the corporations like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, HP and others they do not stop Microsoft Bing and Google search engine from censoring the Internet search results, and HP from being the biggest surveillance tool provider in China.
Furthermore, the 2011 revised version of the Global Online Freedom Act (GOFA)– originally formulated in 2006 to uphold the rights of net users – did not name China, Cuba and Tunisia as “internet restricting countries”. The fear is they will also avoid commenting on the likes of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, US allies that heavily control the Internet accessibility. Citing analyst Rebecca MacKinnon, the article says the GOFA bill was an “instrument” that “divides the world into ‘good’ countries versus ‘bad’ countries” and suitably legislates corporate activities as an extension of US government foreign policy.
Google’s relationship with Beijing: A case of North-South Co-operation?
Internet censorship in China is not new but the censorship machine became “ever more efficiently in mid 2008”. However, though individual corporations have had abrasive relationships with the Chinese government in the past, they have generally complied with their strict domestic-censorship policies even if they were in contradiction to what it espoused in the West.
The case in point is the Google-China case. In 2011 New York Times reported that Google had grown increasingly dissatisfied about censoring content for their Chinese users. They “accused the Chinese government of disrupting its Gmail service in the country” and threatened to stop all operations in the country. However later Google allowed the Chinese Government to renew their license to their website in Mainland China. Since then the company has continued its operations in China (home to the biggest market of Internet users), while still “uncomfortable… in censoring its search results on Beijing’s behalf.”
In this context, Jillian C. York’s accusation that Western tech corporations, such as Google, were not following the universal codes for corporate operations regarding censorship seems logical. However, the Western mainstream media continues to portray Internet censorship as the consequences of the result of the Chinese government’s policies. By doing so they discount the international corporation’s complicity and aiding of it.
Additionally, though certainly abated by the levels of government censorship of the Internet, use of Internet space by the Chinese suggest that public opinion in China is more anti-American than anti-Chinese. More recently on Feb. 20, 2012, BBC reported that the Chinese ‘netizens’ flooded President Obama’s Google+ page “in a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Occupy Wall Street campaign”. The White House has not remarked on the Chinese occupation of Obama’s Google+ page. However, the general reaction has been: “If China ever abandoned its internet restrictions, the United States would have to protect its social media with a Great Firewall of its own.”
Therefore co-operations by the US firms in maintaining the Great Firewall definitely would function as a part of maintaining the security of the North as much as it is about profit. The case of Google’s relationship with Beijing, if looked at as a case of North-South co-operation, certainly does raise interesting questions about profit and state policies in both zones.
Moral education, Censorship and educators in China
The Chinese government has permanently banned social media like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, instant-message groups, even cellphone text messages in addition to restricting some entertainment programs on Television and Internet. The ban specially is on those programs that are based on Western concepts of culture. The rationale upheld for all these cases of censorship is to save the young generation from Western cultural invasion in the form of “trashy television, scandal-prone Hollywood stars, and drug addicted pop stars.”
The World Bank has given China a lower ranking in the business world for its restrictive policy. But undeterred the Chinese government has continued to pay millions to Microsoft, HP, Yahoo, Google and many more Western companies to sustain it. Considering the costs they are paying one might actually wonder if the moral education of youth in such draconian fashions is really worth it!
The Chinese teachers at times bypass the censorship system to give their students access to useful content. They often do so by using proxy servers or Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) like most others. However, they are also not exempted from punishment for breaking the censorship rules, and there were instances when Chinese educators had to go to jail.
An online support group for Chinese educators report that censorship is a choice in China, and not totally obligatory. The reason is that most of the websites published in English by other countries are accessible from China, so anyone with some knowledge of English can read the content of those websites. Teachers can do so too, however, the risks of being punished for not abiding by the censorship rule and going to jail remain!
Clearly, the teachers who disobey the censorship law has reasons to do so. The avenues free Internet usage open up for education and capacity building are too numerous for any government to deny. Therefore I think at this point China must ask whether or not the youth are really benefitting from the censorship arrangement or are the Western Corporations benefitting at the cost of the Chinese people? Please share your ideas and thoughts on this matter.
P.S: For more on censorship please refer to Maria’s post on Cuba’s Internet censorship, and a generation that has never spoken!
Should tech companies do business in China? In Aljazeera on Sept. 22, 2011 http://goo.gl/k0NFG
Chinese “netizens” inundate Obama’s Google+ page. In BBC News China on Feb. 25, 2012: http://goo.gl/hwMjA
Where the US and China can agree to agree. In Aljazeera on 14 Feb., 2012: http://goo.gl/YFrr3
Internet Censorship in China. In the New York Times on March 22, 2010: http://goo.gl/7Dhe9
H.R. 275. A Bill: To promote freedom of expression in Internet. Published in Jan. 5, 2007: http://goo.gl/WMg5N
Government Internet Surveillance Starts with Eyes built in the West. In Electronic Frontier Foundation on Sept. 2, 2011: http://goo.gl/rDYQt
Falun Gong. In the New York Time on April 28, 2009: http://goo.gl/cYGs8
Google Accuses Chinese of Blocking Gmail Service. In the New York Times on March 20, 2011: http://goo.gl/Q4gFf
Google Inc. Updated in the New York Times on Feb. 28, 2012: http://goo.gl/D8PLD
Economy Rankings. In Doing Business, 2011: http://goo.gl/DRRPb
Qatar. In OpenNet Initiative: http://goo.gl/zYTll
Saudi Arabia: In OpenNet Initiative: http://goo.gl/EYzzj
The Internet Freedom Fallacy and the Arab Digital Activism. In Nawaat on Sept. 17, 2010: http://goo.gl/IGHDf
Race to the Bottom: Corporate Complicity in Chinese Internet Censorship in Human Rights Watch, UN Refugee Agency on August 10, 2006: http://goo.gl/Xj6Ls
Why English should be the greatest weapon against censorship in China? In The China Teaching Web on January 25, 2010: http://goo.gl/DMxfA
By Maria Aguirre
What is Enlaces?
Enlaces is an ICT program first introduced in 1992 by the Ministry of Education of Chile. First as a pilot, and then as a national educational program in Chile, its main objective was to improve the access to technology in public schools. In that sense it aimed to reduce the existent gap between the technological services that students from private and public schools get. The program was thought to motivate not only students from under-resourced schools, but to encourage teachers to promote learning in “modern” ways. In the video, the program Enlaces is introduced, portraying how fourth graders are highly motivated by the positive effects of ICT in their learning processes. Teachers also have the opportunity to describe how students’ examinations have improved over time, and what other positive effects are noticeable in their schools, since the program has been introduced..
Enlaces and its impacts over education in Chile
Chile is a middle-income country with impressive socioeconomic indicators if compared with its regional peers. In the educative field they were the pioneers of introducing ICTs as a tool for learning. A pilot which rapidly grew into a national program was set to create technological access to students from public schools as a way to diminish the gap from those of private, more privileged schools.
In 2008, at least 87% of the school body in Chile had access to ICT thanks to this initiative; with an expected ratio of 10 students per computer (2010), one of the most crucial aspects of Enlaces is its appropriate educational content which includes the Chilean curriculum –supported by the state educational portal Educarchile-.
Among the most important impacts of the introduction of ICTs in Chilean education, according to Enlaces, is the increasing awareness “of the importance of ICT in education” and the new competencies developed by the students which are more related to “XXI century skills”. Under a functionalist point of view, Chile is doing a good job by seeking for its students a broader chance to get timely-appropriate skills by means of the use of ICTs. Functionalism perceives education as a way in which students, no matter their backgrounds or their strata, can achieve the same opportunities than their more privileged peers. Moreover, as students get the chance to improve their learning process, they are expected to improve their academic records and do better on standards examinations. This ultimately leads to a meritocratic-based system, in which all the students have the same opportunities. Even though there are many contradictors to this theory –like conflict theory-, I consider that in this case ICTs are actually affecting in a positive way the range of possibilities and options that a public school student has.. If their access to ICTs were to be neglected, their motivation and their contact with a wider range of information would decline, ultimately affecting their possibilities to succeed in both educative system and market place.
The impact of ICT has not only enhanced the experience of Chilean students; teachers are more aware of educational improvements globally and connect to other educators, actively participating through virtual communities. Educational administrators have also benefited; by having a system with easy access, administrators can track student records. This set of experiences facilitates the inclusion of international standards in education; furthermore, Chilean students are building wider knowledge about international development and considering expanded advancement options, like applying to a foreign university.
One of the challenges of Enlaces is that because it started so early, rapid technological advances make it difficult for public policy officials to maintain the technology at a quick enough pace. Some are concerned that it is not suitable to sustain upcoming technological progress. For example, they built appropriate, large laboratories in order to support large desk computers but now, with the increasing use of handheld devices like personal laptops and e-readers at very affordable prices, these laboratories may become dated or unnecessary. . But, that is the price of technology! With constant changes, policy makers and administrative educators need to be at the very forefront of massive technological updates so they can constantly improve the effectiveness for schools.. Sounds expensive and challenging, right? Yet, along with great technological improvements usually also are more affordable prices, especially for educative meanings; so let’s hope that Latin American countries keep the leadership from their neighbors Chile, Uruguay and Brazil and from international success cases like India and some African countries.
Linking up with Enlaces (Chile), World Bank Blogs on Octuber 29, 2009. goo.gl/crq0K
Enlaces Program, the experience of Informatics Education in Chile, Chilean Ministry of Education. goo.gl/GAC2N