What I learned

What I learned last summer?
What would you do if you found a document that stated that Fidel Castro had doubts on whether or not he could rule a country like Cuba? What would the world would be like if someone else would have become dictator? This was the questions that I posed to my high school American History classes. After studying the relations between the United States and Cuba I showed the class the document. Some of them were surprised because they had always assumed that Cuba was communist because that was what the citizens wanted but upon further investigation they decided that it was because of the leader not the people. The kids were split up into groups and they had to decide what the relationship between the two countries would be if Castro had decide that he was not qualified for running a country. They also had to decide how the Cold War would have changed as a result of Castro not running Cuba or even if Cuba had not fallen to communism. Many of the students felt that nothing would have changed. Their explanation was that if Castro didn’t take the job then someone else would have. Which I could see their point.
I had other students who decided that the world would have been very different, in fact I had a group that said that the Cold War would have ended sooner that what it did and we would have been able to control the Soviet Union and avoided the Space Race and many other conflicts if Castro had given up his position.
When we did this lesson it was about two weeks after it was announced that Fidel Castro’s brother was the new leader of Cuba because of Fidel’s health. I also had two students who were from Puerto Rico and they shed a new light on how hated Fidel Castro is in Cuba.