The creation of the Municipal University Centers, to guarantee the continuity of university studies to the graduates of the programs of the Revolution in the places where they reside and work, has constituted the beginning of a new stage in the development of higher education, narrowly link with society its development and demand in its different areas.
Professional training from the University Venues has required a renovating preparation and pedagogical practice based on self-education, in which the flexibility of the training curriculum, the system of relationships and permanent exchange, the individualized educational response, depending on the needs and potentials of each student and the responsibility for education shared directly with the family, teachers, the institution and the community in general.
In these conditions, the participation, collaboration and prominence of students are raised to higher levels, enhancing the role of the teacher as the main facilitator of knowledge, education, and personalized educational work, under the direction of the tutor, considered an integrating axis of the system of educational influences. The results achieved during the years of application at the University Venues are having a positive impact on the training work of the students.
With the legacy of our great pedagogues, we aspire to an educator who carries out his work with great love and dedication and who is the living gospel that Luz y Caballero pointed out. But also, that he has the culture and preparation necessary to "develop the whole man and not just a part of him", as our Apostle expressed it.
We cannot be satisfied in transmitting only the technical knowledge of our specialty with a high level, we cannot limit ourselves to being less instructors, we must teach justice, freedom, rights, in addition to science and letters, but also thanks and art in short, to train a exemplary citizen who knows how to live upright in this age that we have had to live.
José de la Luz y Caballero was one of the great sages of the first half of the 19th century, along with Félix Varela and José Antonio Saco. It was admirable how once a week, the teachers and students of the school gathered around the teacher to listen to his plethora of science talk, more than two hundred disciples of Luz and Caballero joined the liberating deeds of the sixty-eight and ninety-nine and five.
In the Cuban Higher Education system, the figure of the tutor has traditionally been associated with the methodological scientific assistance provided by a specialist of recognized prestige and tradition in a certain field of knowledge, either to the student who in the terminal phase of his career develops his Diploma work, or the university graduate who does postgraduate academic studies and does his or her thesis for the acquisition of a scientific degree or degree.
The creation of the Municipal University Venues has led to the creation of the figure of the tutor, extended to personalized and comprehensive attention that teachers must guarantee to the students assigned to them in tutorials.
Development
In addressing this problem, we start from the consideration that education, as a historically developed social phenomenon, as the nucleus of the socializing process, exerts a decisive influence on the formation of man throughout his life, and must prepare him both for the achievement of an active personal and social incorporation, as well as for the enjoyment and fulfillment derived from it.
José Martí, Hero of the Republic of Cuba expressed «Educating is depositing in each man all the human work that has preceded him: it is making each man a summary of the living world, until the day he lives; it is to put it at the level of its time, so that it floats on it and not leave it below its time, with which it will not be able to float; it is preparing man for life ».
He also pointed out that: “education is the empowerment of men to obtain with relief and honesty the indispensable livelihoods in the time in which they exist, without thereby lowering the delicate, superior and spiritual aspirations of the best part of the human being ».
For Martí, education was necessary for life and with a practical sense, which is shown when referring to this he wrote: «Since man comes to live, education has to prepare him for life. At school you have to learn how to handle the forces with which you have to fight in life ”.
It is to prepare man to successfully face the social and personal demands of each stage of life, which seems to be largely opposed to academic, formal, authoritarian or isolated actions that many times, without realizing such a condition, undertake different socializing agents; without taking into account, the conceptions or ideas that support, or underlie this action, the context in which they develop and how they are manifested in educational practice.
It is important to highlight the link that is established between education and the social objectives to which it must respond on the one hand, and the contribution it must make to individual development on the other, such as the two poles of a tensioned string that represent the points arrival and departure respectively in educational work.
In this sense, it is necessary to start from the consideration that the personality is formed and developed not only under the influence of actions directed towards a purpose of the educational system, but also and in an essential way, in a broad social context, since the subject lives in a society.
One might ask, what is society? There are various definitions in this regard; We consider the following can be the object of reflection: Society can be conceived as the system of relationships created by man and in which he develops his life, which is historically shaped, based on a specific mode of production, on which all life depends. structure and superstructure of the same. It is the environment where man lives, works and develops.
Emile Durkhein, a French sociologist, was the first to develop in a systematic way the idea that education is a social institution, which appears closely linked to the rest of social activities and defines it as the action exercised by adult generations on the that are not yet ripe for social life.
In his book «The rules of the sociological method» he points out that the fundamental objective of education is precisely to make the individual social, that the social environment tends to mold the child in its image, and that parents and teachers are the representatives or intermediaries in shaping that image.
Referring to this, Juan Delval in his book «The ends of education» states that education is a broad and complex phenomenon, which is carried out by different factors: parents, adults in general, teachers, the media, social institutions in definitive that the whole society educates.
Understood in its broadest sense, Delval makes socialization coincide to a certain extent with education, because for him, education is nothing more than the internalization of the behaviors, attitudes and values necessary to participate in social life.
We consider that the criterion that must prevail in all socializing institutions for the formation of new generations is to create an active and transforming attitude, in the face of the difficulties that arise in social life. That is to say, to train personalities that can pose and achieve objectives that respond to the improvement and demands of the society in which they operate. It is to do the educational work in a concrete way, directed more directly to the individual motivational sphere so that it has immediate significance for the personality.
It is necessary that each generation be placed in a situation such that it can give of itself the maximum possible of its potentialities for the benefit of society and each individual in particular. The formation of man is a continuous and complex process that requires, first of all, the precision of the educational objectives that are to be achieved; the determination of the qualities of the personality that have to be formed and developed, without forgetting the characteristics of the ages and the groups with which one works.
In his book «Theory of Education», the Uruguayan pedagogue Jorge Bralich starts from the premise that since man began to consider his own life as a problem, he began to ask and answer about the activities that would eventually be recognized as educational. In the chapter "Necessity and possibility of a Theory of Education" he points out that the breadth and complexity of educational activities has led to the fact that many authors have dedicated themselves to the search for a Theory of Education. Considers that this should allow applicability to various circumstances and places; delve into the educational phenomenon; define the objectives; to elaborate the methods to be used and their practical application and to study the educator-educator link in the plane of their relationships.
Conclusions
This research contributes to raising the integral general culture and improving the teaching-learning process in the new university of the XXI century.
