> Published Tuesday, January 18, 2000, in the Miami Herald
>
> Elian gets guidance from school
>
> Values, behavior, life in Cuba taught in main textbook
>
> BY MEG LAUGHLIN
> mlaughlin at herald.com
>
> Here's what Elian Gonzalez, 6, will learn at the
> private school he now attends in Little Havana: He
> lives in a Christian society and should support
> prayer in public and private schools. He should
> oppose abortion, homosexuality and racism.
> He should love the American flag and realize that ``the
> influence of The United States in the world has
> been beneficial to all.''
>
> The child has completed two weeks of kindergarten
> at the Lincoln-Marti School. If he stays in Miami
> and his great-aunt and great-uncle continue to
> use the $3,000-a-year full tuition scholarship offered
> by school owner Demetrio Perez, Elian will graduate
> from the school in Little Havana when he is 18.
>
> This means that the boy will more than likely be
> influenced by the school's main textbook, Citizens
> Training Handbook, subtitled Discipline, Moral,
> Civism, Urbanity, which students use from
> kindergarten through 12th grade. Perez, the
> author, who also serves on the Miami-Dade County
> School Board, says he wrote the 315-page
> guide for parents, teachers and students at the private
> school to ``produce the worthy citizens our society
> so badly needs.''
>
> The $25 book is divided into 57 chapters ranging
> from ``Foreign Policy'' to ``Serving a Formal
> Dinner'' to ``Friendship.'' Elian, like his classmates,
> will study the book and be tested on its contents
> every nine weeks during his 12 years at the school.
>
> ``The book and the practice of it is a very important
> part of the Lincoln-Marti education,'' says
> Amelia Estrada, 22, a former student.
>
> While at the school, Elian will learn from the
> main textbook that Cuba, where he came from and
> where his father and grandparents still live,
> ``has not been able to provide for people's most basic
> needs such as food, clothing and housing.''
>
> ``We want Elian to know that in this country, we
> in no way support Cuba or people in Cuba who
> believe in that system,'' Perez says.
>
> At Lincoln-Marti, the book will teach Elian that,
> according to immigration laws, certain undesirables
> are not allowed to come to this country: ``habitual
> drunks, adulterers and sexually immoral people.''
> Elian will read that Richard Nixon got a raw deal
> when he was forced to resign as President, and
> that Americans now regret this and honor him.
>
> John Krutulis, associate director of The Gulliver
> Schools and a board member of the Dade
> Association of Academic Nonpublic Schools, to
> which Lincoln-Marti belongs, says that what is
> taught at any private school is up to the school.
> The state can monitor the facility, the
> teacher-student ratio and the general curriculum,
> Krutulis says, but not what goes on in the
> classroom.
>
> ``Parents choose a private school,'' Krutulis says.
> ``Besides the school itself, they are the only ones
> with any say about what their children learn.''
>
> FORMER STUDENT
>
> Letrease Clark, a Lincoln-Marti graduate who now
> sends her 5-year-old son to the school, said that
> her parents wanted her to go there because the
> school taught conservative family values and
> diversity.
>
> ``I graduated from the school. I know what is
> taught there,'' Clark says. ``I know what's in the citizens
> guide, and I wanted the same thing for my child.''
>
> Elian will learn that he should try to be happy
> and remember to smile in an interested way when
> people talk to him. He should not be dogmatic,
> and he should never invite enemies to the same party.
>
> The book will also teach Elian that, when he is
> an adult, he can miss a dinner party but never a
> funeral. He can send flowers to women but never
> to men. He can serve cocktails at his parties and
> should serve wine with dinner. His wife should
> make sure the dinner plates do not clash with the
> tablecloth, and should quickly respond to written
> invitations.
>
> The small children at the school will put on skits
> to learn from the guide, the book says.
>
> At the Lincoln-Marti School, Elian Gonzalez will
> never be spanked. If he misbehaves, he will be
> separated from his classmates and told to sit in
> silence for a short time, as the book advises. He will
> pray every day before lunch. He will stand when an
> adult enters the room.
>
> STUDY AND PLAY
>
> He will mix outdoor play with serious study by
> going to the school's playground -- a small, fenced,
> mulched playground, wedged between two busy
> streets. As an older student, he will play on a
> fenced, concrete lot, which has two basketball
> hoops with torn nets and electrical transformers on a
> platform over it.
>
> The school was founded by Perez's father, the late
> Demetrio Perez Sr., who was an educator in
> Matanzas, Cuba, where he and Demetrio Jr.
> grew up. In 1968, the father started the first
> Lincoln-Marti School in Miami, named after
> Abraham Lincoln and Jose Marti, two Perez family
> heroes. The school now has 15 branches in
> Miami-Dade County.
>
> Over the past decade, students from the school
> have marched in yearly Calle Ocho parades to
> commemorate the Bay of Pigs invasion. They
> also have marched to honor the memory of Jose Marti
> and in support of the trade embargo against Cuba.
> Several times, they marched in front of Brigade
> 2506, a Cuban exile paramilitary group, and
> chanted in Spanish: ``Down with Fidel'' and ``Liberty for
> Cuba.''
>
> Estrada, the former student, says that her views
> ``broadened'' after she went to public school, college
> and graduate school, after attending the private
> school. But, she says, certain teachings remained
> with her: ``Lincoln-Marti taught me to participate in
> the community,'' she says.
>
> Two other former students, a sister and brother
> who asked not to be named, gave the school mixed
> reviews. The young woman liked it; her brother
> didn't. Their mother summarized their experiences:
> ``My daughter was very well-behaved and dutiful
> and did well at Lincoln-Marti. But my son, who was
> a bit restless and questioning, did not.''
>
> DIFFERENT OUTCOMES
>
> The mother says the daughter graduated. The son
> was asked to leave the school.
>
> ``We want children who think in a healthy way,''
> Perez says. ``We would not want a child who leans
> toward the communist way of thinking.''
>
> A few years ago, Lincoln-Marti was cited by
> Florida's Department of Health and Rehabilitative
> Services because of problems at a couple of its
> branches. Parents complained that there was no
> milk for small children and no air conditioning in
> the summer, and that they were not allowed inside
> the classrooms.
>
> A 1994 HRS report says the Hialeah Lincoln-Marti
> School (not the Little Havana branch where Elian
> is) had to be closed because it was ``run down''
> and ``dilapidated'' and ``unsafe for children.'' It was
> reopened, the report says, when improvements were made.
>
> In 1997, the Hialeah school again received a
> critical evaluation, along with another branch of the
> school in North Miami: ``No toys, books or puzzles,
> only a few broken crayons. Broken plumbing.
> Children left unsupervised.'' At another branch,
> a parent filed a complaint saying there was rotten
> garbage, with maggots in it, in the lunchroom.
>
> Perez calls the problems ``minor'' and says they
> were all quickly corrected. Indeed, a few months
> after the first critical reports, subsequent reports
> said: ``Schools meet minimal standards.''
>
> The branch in Little Havana, which Elian Gonzalez
> attends, has received satisfactory ratings from
> the state for the past two years.
>
> ``All of our schools are in full compliance with
> state standards,'' Perez says.
>
> CHILD PROMOTED
>
> Recently, Elian's first-grade class learned
> about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in anticipation of the
> holiday honoring King. Perez says the child was put
> ahead to first grade, even though it is the middle of
> the school year and he just turned 6, because he
> is such a good reader of Spanish. But he
> read about King in English.
>
> ``Dr. King tells people to love, not to hate,'' a
> picture caption said.
>
> ``We want the children to love as long as they
> understand they must love the liberty in this country,
> and not a communist system,'' Perez says.
>
> The school guide gives advice about how children
> learn to love: ``From birth, children desire and
> need their parents' attention. They need their
> parents to speak to them, hold them and caress them.''
> The book also says: ``Children need their parents
> to choose the kind of education they should be given.''
>
> But this advice is not meant to suggest that Elian
> should be with his only living parent, his father in
> Cuba, Perez says.
>
> ``The father is not really the father,'' Perez says.
> ``In Cuba, Castro thinks for everyone. He is the
> father, and the child does not need Castro to
> care for him or make decisions.''
>
> In two weeks, Lincoln-Marti students will march in
> a parade to honor Jose Marti and will again sing
> and chant slogans with Brigade 2506. Perez hopes
> Elian will participate.
>
> ``It is a way for him to fight indoctrination,'' Perez says.