The Training of Physics Teachers in Cuba: A Historical Approach

Abstract

The regular, systematic training of physics teachers in Cuba is quite recent when compared to the long history of physics itself. However, its development may serve to illustrate some interesting solutions to a long-standing question: How should a physics teacher be trained in agreement with a certain society at a given moment? In the Cuban context the answer to this question involves quite an original sequence of continuities and breaks, following perhaps the thoughts of Bolívar’s teacher, Simón Rodríguez, who wrote in the nineteenth century: “Beware! The mania of slavishly imitating the enlightened nations may well make America in its infancy play the role of an old lady.”