25979: Fouche (reply) to Vedrine (article): Haitians And The Myth About Blacks Dont Read (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: "[UTF-8] Rachel FouchÃ" <rfouche@verizon.net>

You bring up some salient issues about the level of literacy within the Black 
and Haitian communities, however I think the Haitian immigrant community may 
have a slight edge in that education has always held an esteemed role in 
Haitian culture, regardless of the literacy of the parents. I cannot recall 
being read to as a child, but I do remember the weekly trips to the library and 
the look my father would give us if we thought we were going to walk out of 
there WITHOUT a book in hand!

Haitian children who currently immigrate to the US -- and have had some level 
of education in Haiti -- often suffer from a peculiar learning disability which 
is just now being recognized. Because Haiti is a bi-lingual country, young 
children who go to school are often not grounded in the grammar/syntax of 
either language (this has started to change, but many Haitian families still 
send their children to French instruction schools, yet speak only Creole at 
home -- learning to read and write in one language, and speak in another). When 
they immigrate to the US, a third language in which they must read, speak, and 
write is introduced -- but for more and more newer Haitian immigrants, this 
proves to be an extremely difficult task, as they do not have a comparative 
model of written/spoken syntax, especially if their parents can only provide 
spoken instruction in one language.

Those of us who grow up in multilingual households -- regardless of 
socio-economic level -- can develop linguistic "peculiarities." My educated 
parents immigrated to the US in the 70s, and although I have become a stickler 
for written English grammar, my childhood friends continually rib me about the 
concept of "loan" and "borrow" -- which in French and Kreyol are a matter of 
the adverb, not the verb itself. "Do you want to loan this from me?" was my big 
one, but I grew up in a community where a majority of the children were first 
or second generation immigrants who still had active exposure with their 
parent's or grandparent's mother tongue (usually a Romance language).

For Haitian children entering the school system today, bilingual education has 
suffered a financial and social erosion at a time when it is needed the most. 
More and more children do not acquire the basics of the English language 
through grammar and spelling; it has been supplanted by Whole Language 
learning, which in my opinion only is effective in English-literate families. 
And their "indigenous" classmates have been fully absorbed into the 
English-speaking culture, adding additional pressure to reduce funding for 
bilingual education.

Research into children that have suffered extreme isolation has pointed to the 
fact that grounding in the syntax of one language is essential before puberty. 
For the Haitian immigrant child/youth, they often only skim the surface of 
three non-mutually intelligible languages, never becoming linguistically 
proficient in any language. We, as a community, need to lobby for tri-lingual 
education in Kreyol, French, and English -- and I think we are the largest 
immigrant group in the US who needs this type of instruction for our youth -- 
and the reintroduction of grammar and spelling in diverse classrooms. Boring 
stuff? You bet -- but I thank my lucky stars that I went through spelling bees 
and sentence diagrams so I can effectively communicate my ideas (although I 
still have to think about how to use the words "loan" and "borrow" ).

In addition, those of us who have been in the US for decades need to actively 
mentor newer Haitian immigrants on advocating for their children in the school 
system. Because the teacher is truly revered in Haitian culture (making the low 
pay worthwhile in my opinion), parents are often reluctant to demand services 
for their youth as "the teacher knows best." But as US schools have been called 
upon to provide more social services at the same level of staffing, teachers 
are often unable to address all the learning problems of all their charges -- 
especially if the parents do not take an active participation in the child's 
learning, whether by fault or by inadequacy. My parents, both a product of the 
strict Haitian school system, would always go to PTA night -- even if they 
never understood the US school system (my father informed many of my elementary 
school teachers that it was OK to inflict corporal punishment if I did 
something wrong, even though it had been outlawed in Massachusetts).

We have to take an interest in our childrens' education whether they are linked 
to us by blood or by the street on which we live. My next door neighbors were 
(White) French Canadian, and my mother and these ladies would converse in 
"Franglais" as they gardened outdoors or hung laundry. These elderly ladies 
would make it their business to ask about what I learned in school on almost a 
daily basis. When another Haitian family who were from the same part of Haiti 
that my mother came from (we also shared some cousins as well), I had more 
people to answer to about my school activities for the day -- and if I did 
well, more praise to receive as well!

However, when more Haitian families moved into our city (and on our street), my 
mother did not extend the same neighborliness to them, as they were "san savez" 
yokels not related to our family in any way who hung their clothing on the 
fence and were loud; when I caught her making disparaging remarks about these 
Haitians who did not have the same access to education as she had, I challenged 
her to assist these people with learning the ropes instead of her (and our 
first Haitian neighbor) ridiculing these people as unsophisticated. And if I 
had lived at home at the time, I would have offered to tutor their children 
because of the simple fact that Haitians have to stick together despite the 
social chasms that divide our homeland and community internally. That is 
certainly the American part of my Haitian American-ness -- which we would all 
do better to develop before our country and culture collapse underneath its 
petty social structure.

Rachel FouchÃ