14994: Saint-Vil Re: 14990: Allouard: Issue Papers: Education and Adult Literacy (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Jean Saint-Vil <jafrikayiti@hotmail.com>

This is an important insight you provide here Phillipe Allouard. I share
most of observations and having spent a few months as volunteer teacher in
one of these makeshift schools, I can testify that these children are not
learning much. I honestly believe that my class learned more on this single
afternoon when I finally decided to take them to the MuPaNaH than they had
learned during a whole year.

You wrote "Definitly, NOW, things being as they are, having 100% of
the children at school would help but a little: the only good point I see,
...would be that it would indicate disparition of
restavek phaenomenon..."

I am not so sure about that conclusion. Because the church school where I
was teaching was attended mostly by kids leaving in servitude. The lucky
ones who are sent to "lekòl di swa". Unfortunately, such "schools" operate
according to the whim of the priest who happens to be in charge of the
church at the time. While I was there, the priest was a brave man who
understood the necessity to give these abused kids a rare chance to play as
well as learn. So, every afternoon, before we sang the national anthem
loudly and with pride  (in Kreyòl) and begun the formal class, the priest
encouraged my habit of playing soccer with the kids in the church yard.

But, a new priest arrived and I had to live Haiti so these kids are probably
back to repeating these non-sensical phrases in the books they carry so
proudly and innocently every afternoon to the church. Some of them will no
doubt achieve their dreams of mental and economic freedom, but I doubt the
school will have been a positive factor in all this, unless some radical
change occured there since I left.

You wrote: "Now, if someone have a solution, I would be glad to hear it and
to help!"


How about Haitians rejecting the distractions of all these false crises
brought to them courtesy of our friends of the "international community" and
start spending most our energies on real challenges.

i.e. Forget about never-ending elections - we play this game only once every
5 years. Sa k pa kontan anbake!

Focus on real priorities: building real schools. Repatriating the million
Haitian brains serving other societies all over the globe. Building a real
health infrastructure. Get back to business as we once did for a few short
months in 1991.

To do all these Philippe, our President, whoever he may be, at any given
time, will have to have the courage to look the jokers of the OAS, Vatican,
France, Canada, USA etc... to keep their $4000, their $50,000 and even their
millions and leave us alone. So Haitians can begin to breath and spend our
energies and ressources where they can make a difference - not at Hotel
Montana drinking Barbancour with Luigi Enaudi and company.

It's absurd to believe a few makeshift schools built here by NGO X and a few
others built there by gift of government Y will yield anything other than
"Structurally adjusted Poverty".

I have said it before, I'll say it again. The only way Haiti, and the myriad
of other empovrished black nations will come out of this cleverly designed
poverty in which they find themselves is if, they finally decide to take
bold independent moves such as:

1) Deciding on their own to cancel their up-side-down debts to the oppresive
neo-colonial states and their agencies (IMF, World Bank etc...) - January 1,
2004 seems to be perfect timing to me

2) Join the global reparations struggle

Those who believe the status quo is better, please explain to me how it has
benefitted us so far?
----------


I hope this is kosher enough for publication Bob. It's unfortunate, no one
is commenting on the outrageous Actualite article since you must have
considered my last message to be out of line. But, I do respect that this is
your territory. You make the rules and I follow or else. I was just hoping
someone with the correct language skills would address the issue because it
is important.

Regards,
Jafrikayiti
"Power never conceedes anything without a demand. It never has and never
will" brother Frederick Douglass

«Depi nan Ginen bon nèg ap ede nèg!»
http://www.i-port.net/sd-in-j/



----Original Message Follows----
From: Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>
To: Haiti mailing list <haiti@lists.webster.edu>
Subject: 14990:  Allouard:  Re: 14960:  Vedrine:  Re: Karshan: Feb. 7, 2003
Issue Papers: Education and Adult Literacy (fwd)
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 13:52:05 -0600 (CST)


From: Philippe Allouard <allouard@libertysurf.fr>

Please!

Are haitian children just a statistical quantity, and is education only
about numbers for us to focuss only upon the percentage of children going to
school?
Having the possibility to help a few children, I do so paying for their
scolarship... As often  as I can spare a moment (it is not often) I check
their lessons, and, sometimes, I had to attend meetings with other "parents"
and the board, or to speak with  some school Principal, the real parents
being, when alive, in the countryside...

I have not enough money to send those children in good private schools, nor
do I have enough contacts and influence to have them accepted in some state
operated "Lycee", usually correct, and far less expensive... therefore they
attend "normal" schools, not too expensive, even if far too much for many
people, and without any real control from the Ministere de l'Education
Nationale.

Sadly, I have to say that for the majority of those children, attending
school is of no help at all except, it's important, and it's the reason why
I am often still paying for it, except the fact that, by going to school,
they have a social status, and avoid being given derogatory names as
"kokorat", "vanipye", "restavek"... They are "eleves" / pupils, and
therefore do exist and are worth something in both their eyes and  other
people's.

But are school there only to provide a social status to their pupils? When I
used to taught, I also used to thought that schools should provide reliable
knoledge, culture, preparation for social life, and, in a way, freedom. I
received both in my family and at school, and taught after this, that
reading is a freedom, that knoledge is a weapon to free yourself, that a
book can be a friend or the way to have a friendship with its author...
Nomatter where you live or when  he lived!

With "my" children, I discovered that in their schools, they learned about
poesie, but never listened to it, about haitian literature, but never read
even a page of it... I discovered that scientific knoledge is absent, or
given in such an abstract way and without order in the lessons that it does
not provide any light upon the way living beings, natural substances, and
the whole world function (not to speak about technical things they use
without having any idea about the way they go, and never being able to ling
their knoledge, when thay have one, with the experience).

I discovered that a teacher is not a "pedagogue", one that held the child by
hand to help him on the way towards knoledge, but a I-know-it-all prince
that never allows questions, never gives explanations, never justify the
scores he gave, and is mainly there to shout at the pupils, have them
beaten, or excluded, and repeating, or, more often, having a pupil writting
on the blackboard, transcription of a photocopy of an old copy of a badly
printed lesson taken from his own teacher, or from a second hand book bought
on the street... How many times did I found that litterature lesson was a
bad echo of the same lesson printed by some port-au-prince teacher in the
50s !!! (I am not joking!!!)

Of course, lessons are given in french, language that the teacher hardly
speaks, and never writtes correctly...

Exams are the worst... the printed paper the pupils have to work, one is
hardly able to read it, for technical reason, but once you managed to
deciffer the letters, you discover that several of the questions are not
understandable (in french)... and for English and Spanish matters, it's
worst. And when  the pupils eventually have their scores, they never have a
chance to look back at their work, nor to work on the answers they gave,
good or bad, nor on the good answers they should have given.

But I am wrong: the worst is that: not once did I help a pupil to reflect on
the lesson he was trying to learn by heart without even trying to understand
it (second point is usually not the goal)... and sometimes to detect a
mistake, a nonsense in the lesson, or just some sentence the sense of whitch
was difficult to catch... At the begining, I encouraged the pupil to go back
to the teacher and to ask for explanations.... I don't do this anymore: the
pupil was usually insulted, often punished for lack of respect towards the
Teacher, and when, seldom, he had an answer, it usually occured that the
answer was either stupid or less clear than the point that led to the
question...

Result is that, as I wrote, I still pay for shcool, but just to do like
everyone, and,  in some cases, I had the pupil not going to school anymore,
but to work, and to some private lessons like Institut Francais... more
expensive but with some results.

Again, here is my small experience, but, believe me, with more than just 2
or 3 children... Definitly, NOW, things being as they are, having 100% of
the children at school would help but a little: the only good point I see,
and, mind, not a small one, would be that it would indicate disparition of
restavek phaenomenon...

Now, if someone have a solution, I would be glad to hear it and to help!

Regards,

                         Philippe


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