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EL TOQUE

Mandela's Final Peace? Castro-Obama Handshake Sparks New Hope

The handshake in Soweto
The handshake in Soweto

-Editorial-

SAO PAULO — It’s the image that became the symbol of Nelson Mandela’s memorial in Soweto: the handshake between U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro. And it's only fitting that this is the image that remains.

The United States and Cuba have been living in open animosity since the Cold War. From the end of the 1960s, Washington has been imposing a commercial and financial embargo on the island that turned Communist after the movement led by Fidel Castro took power in 1959.

But Obama’s gesture was not unprecedented. Before him, other U.S. presidents have met with leaders of hostile countries without those confabs leading to bilateral relations. In the gallery of these historical meetings there are, for example, pictures of Harry Truman greeting Joseph Stalin at the 1945 Potsdam Conference, and others of Bill Clinton shaking Fidel Castro’s hand at the United Nations in 2000.

[rebelmouse-image 27087636 alt="""" original_size="479x599" expand=1]

Winston Churchill, Truman, and Stalin at Potsdam Conference (Truman Library)

U.S. officials have said that the encounter between Obama and Raul Castro hadn’t been planned. Even so, a handshake between leaders of enemy nations always arouses curiosity and inevitably sparks speculation.

The recent rapprochement between the United States and Iran reinforces the idea that a similar path could be found with Cuba. But what really foments speculation that the American embargo could be lifted is the very anachronism of these sanctions.

According to the Cuban Democracy Act that the U.S. Congress passed in 1993, the blockade is to be maintained until the island agrees on democratic reforms. Today, however, the embargo actually slows down this process more than it encourages it.

There are also emphatic signs that the Castro influence may be reaching its end. With the extinction of the Soviet bloc, the island lost its geopolitical importance and has since been suffering from an excruciating economic crisis. Increasingly criticized, both inside and outside the country, the dictatorship has had no choice but to make compromise after compromise.

Maintaining the embargo only punishes the Cuban population and supplies the regime with easy anti-American propaganda.

The presence of the United States in a process of economic reconstruction would be more productive. A gesture of reconciliation from the American government would probably be met with internal obstacles, but these also seem minor when compared to the opportunities such a move would create.

All would gain if the handshake between Obama and Castro — in the same spirit of reconciliation Nelson Mandela will be remembered for — represented a real first step on the road to a normalized relationship between the two countries.

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Future

AI Is Good For Education — And Bad For Teachers Who Teach Like Machines

Despite fears of AI upending the education and the teaching profession, artificial education will be an extremely valuable tool to free up teachers from rote exercises to focus on the uniquely humanistic part of learning.

Journalism teacher and his students in University of Barcelona.

Journalism students at the Blanquerna University of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.

© Sergi Reboredo via ZUMA press
Julián de Zubiría Samper

-Analysis-

BOGOTÁ - Early in 2023, Microsoft tycoon Bill Gates included teaching among the professions most threatened by Artificial Intelligence (AI), arguing that a robot could, in principle, instruct as well as any school-teacher. While Gates is an undoubted expert in his field, one wonders how much he knows about teaching.

As an avowed believer in using technology to improve student results, Gates has argued for teachers to use more tech in classrooms, and to cut class sizes. But schools and countries that have followed his advice, pumping money into technology at school, or students who completed secondary schooling with the backing of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have not attained the superlative results expected of the Gates recipe.

Thankfully, he had enough sense to add some nuance to his views, instead suggesting changes to teacher training that he believes could improve school results.

I agree with his view that AI can be a big and positive contributor to schooling. Certainly, technological changes prompt unease and today, something tremendous must be afoot if a leading AI developer, Geoffrey Hinton, has warned of its threat to people and society.

But this isn't the first innovation to upset people. Over 2,000 years ago, the philosopher Socrates wondered, in the Platonic dialogue Phaedrus, whether reading and writing wouldn't curb people's ability to reflect and remember. Writing might lead them to despise memory, he observed. In the 18th and 19th centuries, English craftsmen feared the machines of the Industrial Revolution would destroy their professions, producing lesser-quality items faster, and cheaper.

Their fears were not entirely unfounded, but it did not happen quite as they predicted. Many jobs disappeared, but others emerged and the majority of jobs evolved. Machines caused a fundamental restructuring of labor at the time, and today, AI will likely do the same with the modern workplace.

Many predicted that television, computers and online teaching would replace teachers, which has yet to happen. In recent decades, teachers have banned students from using calculators to do sums, insisting on teaching arithmetic the old way. It is the same dry and mechanical approach to teaching which now wants to keep AI out of the classroom.

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