18600: Re: 18585: toudwat: RE: 18555: Aristide, Preval, Schools, Steele Foundation and Money (Was: Re: 18528: anonymous: Re: 18504 White: Maxine Water's press release) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Pierre Jean <pierrejean2004@yahoo.com>

Toudwat -

What I am supposed to get from your point? That it is
actually fine to spend that money on US personnel
rather than to train HAITIAN security personnel to
protect the President?

If instead of spending all that money - au bas mot,
$15 million in 5 years - a fraction went to training
qualified Haitian police to do what the Steele
Foundation is doing today, with the balance going in
the Treasury for social programs, wouldn't that make
more sense?

I also noticed that you tiptoed around the REAL ISSUES
in my post, to wit:

+ if you do not have ENOUGH money for both education
and extra (read: superfluous) protection, which would
you rather choose as an expenditure?

+ if you do not have ENOUGH money for both a "place"
and education, which would you rather choose as an
expenditure?

You yourself wrote:

> we should focus on the next generations if we want
> competant civil
> management... closing the schools like it is done
> right now will not solve
> anything either...

Exactly my point I believe! So what makes more sense?
In the best of all worlds, we would build a bunch of
schools that would be staffed with trained educators
AND we would make sure that the people, young and old,
from "les quartiers populaires" as they say in Haiti
would have enough space for entertainment AND we would
have a first rate health care system AND ...

But we do not live in an ideal world and resources are
finite. So in my book the choices we make highlight
the priorities that matter to us.

My conclusion is that Aristide would rather have too
much security (USGPN + CIMO + Steele Foundation +
Regular Police + Chimè camped out in front of the
palace and "aux alentours") than hire 2,000 new
teachers and give poor kids a fighting chance in an
unkind world.

As for your mention of private schools and NGO's and
such, it is not by choice that they run their own
schools. It is that the support from the Ministry of
Education is practically nil, and has been so well
before Lavalas came to power. The last meaningful
reform in Education occurred under Joseph C. Bernard,
ironically enough under Duvalier. After him, no
Education Minister (except maybe for Buteau) has done
ANYTHING to improve the lot of the education system.
Although she went out in style with her principled
stand on the UEH Dean debacle of December 5, 2003,
Marie-Carmelle Paul Austin was under a cloud for the
mysterious disappearance of 14 million gourdes from
the Ministry of Education bank accounts. Am I right,
or am I wrong? So when people at the level of the
Ministry of Education help themselves to the funds
that should go to education, what can be expected of
such a Ministry? When for political clientelism
reasons, members of OPs who barely have a 7th grade
education in some cases (victims of the system) are
hired as "correcteurs" for the Baccalaureat exam by
the Ministry, ending a long tradition of involvement
of teachers, what message is that sending to the rest
of the educational system?

Also, it is incorrect to assume that the majority of
private schools are run by NGO's and religious
organizations. The majority are run by private Haitian
citizens who are grouped into a couple of
organizations. They are just not as visible. In fact,
88% of elementary school students in Haiti attend
private schools. (World Bank figures)

Oh, by the way, do government officials send their
kids to public schools or to private schools? Name the
last government official whose kids attended Lycee
Petion or Lycee Toussaint or Ecole Republique du
Venezuela or any other public school. What kind of
statement are they sending to the people? It is good
enough for you but it is not good enough for me?

So tell me, tou dwat, when all is said and done, how
would you have spent that $15 million that will be
going to the US never to come back into the Haitian
system? Was that the best way to manage the "security"
of the president? Does that mean that no Haitian
President can be protected by his own kind? That is
what you seem to imply. And that's a hell of a
statement coming from a President who railed against
American imperialism and the long reach of the
American miltary complex for years and years from the
top of his pulpit at St Jean Bosco.

Charlemagneperaltement,

Pierre Jean.

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