Gaspar Jorge García Galló

A politician and teacher, he was part of the generation of educators who during the first half of the twentieth century linked their educational work to the struggles of the national labor movement.

He was born in Quivicán, province of La Habana, the son of a poor family of Lebanese origin. At ten years old he was forced to leave Public School to work as a sugar cane agricultural laborer, and from eleven years old he worked in tobacco production. He was also a barber and street vendor, among other occupations.

As a tobacco worker he worked in the H. Upmann tobacco factory, which allowed him to study at night. At eighteen years old he passed his examination as a qualified teacher and later graduated. He worked in the Romeo y Julieta and Tomás Gutiérrez tobacco factories. This condition linked him to the Cuban labor movement. In the twenties of the last century he was a student and companion of Julio Antonio Mella—who exercised great influence on his life—at the Universidad Popular José Martí.

His work as a schoolteacher allowed him to continue improving himself until he earned his high school diploma and entered the university. In 1930 he completed his studies in Philosophy and Letters at the University of La Habana. During those years he simultaneously pursued his studies in Pedagogy with those in Law. In 1933 he earned his doctorate in Pedagogy and began to work as a professor of Social Sciences at the Normal School of Santa Clara, which gave him the opportunity to address the critical problems affecting Cuban society. A professor of unusual culture and elegant sense of humor, he managed to exercise enormous influence on the young student teachers attending his classes, which usually exceeded the classroom's capacity.

In 1935 he was dismissed from that center for his active participation in the general strike in March of that year, where Cuban teachers played a relevant role in revolutionary activity. In the tobacco factory, to which he always returned, he led different labor union movements. In 1939 he aspired to occupy a professor position in the Philosophy chair at the University of La Habana, but he did not achieve his goal.

In 1952 he won by competition the chair of Greek Language and Literature at the School of Philosophy and Letters of the newly founded Central University of Las Villas. He alternated his work as a professor, lecturer, and author of numerous articles in pedagogical journals, with labor union activities. He was one of the speakers and lecturers who worked the most among the workers and peasants of Las Villas, which allowed him to be known not only in university settings, but in the humblest proletarian and peasant homes. From 1953 until the triumph of the Revolution his home suffered repeated raids and he was summoned, detained, and imprisoned on several occasions.

In 1959 he was elected dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the Central University of Las Villas, as recognition of his sustained work, inside and outside the center, and for his contribution to raising the cultural level of students and workers.

In 1960 he was part of the University Council, comprised of deans, school presidents, rector, and president of the University Student Federation (FEU). In 1961, Year of Education, he represented the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations (ORI) on the National Literacy Commission, where he contributed, with his prestige and real knowledge of the situation of backwardness of the population and of the idiosyncrasy of the Cuban people, to promote the organizational work of the Commission and the implementation of measures that accelerated the literacy of large masses of illiterates.

In those years he represented the University Council of the Central University of Las Villas in several European countries.

At the I Congress of the UNEAC (Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba), in 1961, he was admitted as a member. In 1962, representing the province of Las Villas on the Superior Council of Universities, he participated in university reform, in which he had the responsibility of designing the main transformations in teaching at higher education centers. At the same time he attended the International Symposium held at Lomonosov University, Moscow, where he was declared Guest of Honor.

From 1962 to 1967 he served as General Secretary of the newly formed National Union of Education Workers. This position allowed him to participate in the main revolutionary transformations that were taking shape in education.

He acted as a lecturer in meetings and assemblies of teachers, was a contributor to the first education magazine of the Revolution, and contributed to guiding the development of content in the new study programs.

From 1963 he began to direct the Philosophy department of the University of La Habana, after intense preparation and after having taught courses on Marxism-Leninism.

From 1967 he was an advisor in this discipline at the Educational Development Center of the Ministry of Education (MINED). From 1970 to 1973 he held various political responsibilities, while continuing to teach Philosophy classes in different State agencies.

In 1977 he was granted the status of Professor Emeritus of the Central University of Las Villas. In those years he developed commendable work as a philosophy professor at the National Center for Scientific Research, in La Habana, one of the first centers for training science researchers, which was attended by young university students and professionals from different research centers in the country. In 1986, on his eightieth anniversary, the Central University of Las Villas awarded him the Distinction Diploma, in recognition of his extensive professional, educational, and political work at that prestigious center of study. He died on February 4, 1992 at the age of eighty-six.

His contribution to the development of education and Cuban pedagogical theory is comprised of the set of articles that make up the Historical Outline of Education in Cuba, as well as other works of his that provide a new vision of the history of education in Cuba.

He introduced themes not addressed by other authors, such as the formative influence of material living conditions, "non-school forms of education," and the educational role of the press and other mass media, which make it possible to capture the process of development of national consciousness in what pertains to the struggle of ideas.

García Galló introduced several concepts that would later be used systematically in Cuban education: the concept of mambí educators; the prefiguring of the concept of social educator; the distinction between leader and caudillo, an important precision for the study of political leadership in addressing the role of personality and the masses; the concept of the work of the educator and researcher as creative labor, and of the teacher as a creator of human values; the concept of school-to-field, which he formulated in five essential principles that were the theoretical foundation of the School-to-Field Plan; the concept of emerging teacher training; as well as providing a broad vision of the emergence and development of Popular Education Organizations.

He made known to Cuban readers the names and works of prominent educational theorists such as Bogdan Suchodolski, Heinz Karraz, Mario Manacorda, Aníbal Ponce, and Alcira Legaspi de Arismendi.

He was among the first, after 1959, to value the importance of José Martí's educational theory, for whose study he provided guiding suggestions in more than one text specifically dedicated to the work of the Apostle.

He gave a predominant role to pedagogy through his writings and public interventions and called on educators to take advantage of the practical experiences of the educational revolution to establish revolutionary pedagogy.