12475: Re: 12469: Student preparation to study Haiti and..... Laleau and Corbett reply

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: NLaleau@aol.com
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Dear Robert,
I hate to admit it, but my former employer, the mayor of a small rural
city in
California, also thought Haiti was an island in the South Pacific...

--nancylaleau
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Corbett adds:  Over the past 20 years I have given dozens of presentations
on Haiti to church groups and civic organization (Lyons club, Elks and so
on).  It is a common, very common, response in the U.S. of people not
having the slightest idea of where Haiti is and in which ocean it resides.

Further, even those who have a vague idea, often, even usually, are
confused about its status:  is it an island or not.  I would roughly guess
that more than 1/2 the people in such audiences have no idea that it
shares an island with the Dominican Republic.

On the other hand, I've also done very similar lectures in Austria over
the past 20 years.  There my German pronunciation of Ayiti often confuses
people, but once they get the WORD, they uniformly know that Haiti is
only a part of the island of Hispaniola!  And they know where it is with
some exactitude.

I've always been convinced those experiences tell me a great deal about
the relative strengths of the two nations' educational systems in dealing
with general knowledge of the world.

Bob Corbett