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a1831: Educational Experiences (fwd)
From: riwilson <RIWILSON@maf.org>
Working in education in Haiti is both rewarding and frustrating.
It is rewarding because the students are very diligent. They WANT
education.
In our "lekol biblik" we have students who have finished high
school and those who have not. We also have students who are enrolled
in various professional schools (law, education, and medicine) at the
same time they are enrolled in ours. But they all have one thing in
common--enthusiasm.
But with the enthusiasm are some problems that cause frustration.
One of these is critical thinking (at least that's what we call it
here in the U.S.). Haitian students are excellent at memory work.
They are used to that. But for many the next problem is making
conclusions and/or analogies.
If I give them one or two words from a verse of scripture they can
find it almost immediately. But if I ask them to draw a conclusion or
relationship between two or three verses it is very difficult for
them. The longer they are with us in school the better some become at
this.
We teach a course in Aristotelian logic which really helps them.
Because our facilities are limited (size wise) class size is also
limited so we must limit student numbers. We always have more
students wanting the course than we can accomodate.
One observation as a result of comparison. Haitians stress rote
memory in education. The U. S. stresses critical thinking. If we
could combine both systems in both countries so that early on rote
memory of information is stressed and then critical thinking
introduced later on we might have really great results for both
countries.
Richard Wilson