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9041: American Lekol Bolet (fwd)
From: JHUDICOURTB@aol.com
(For those who are not familiar with the term: Lekol Bolet literally means
lottery school ;it is a disparaging term to describe the multitude or bogus
schools around Haiti where the only principal's bank account profits from the
entreprise. Just like a Bank Bolet.)
Since this is the start of the a new school year I would like to warn those
who are sending their children to school in Haiti. I spent last year in
Haiti with 3 children. The youngest one did fine in third grade in a Haitian
school ran by my own sisters in Petion-Ville. He learned to read and spell
both Creole and French and kept up his English at Acacia Ecole Bilingue. The
older boys did not want to take the challenge of a French speaking school in
the 9th and 10th grade. The 2 best known American Schools, Union and
Quisqueya were not accessible to us. Union because it is too expensive and
Quisqueya because we do not share the Baptist faith. One school seemed to
offer some advantages: 1) it was close to our home in Freres 2) the curricul
um came from the University of Nebraska 3) the cost was not too prohibitive
although higher than most schools in Haiti (U$2000 in September + 4000 gdes a
month). We went for it and it was a big mistake. Here are some of the
problems:
1) the hidden cost: while the principal told us that we had to order the
books from the University of Nebraska, she didn't really explain that we also
had to pay registration fees there. So a call to the University to "order
books" set us back another U$1,500 per semester.
2)lack of teachers: Most of the people working there were occasional Haiti
residents, people who were there because their spouse were working in an
international organization. They were totally uncommitted and came a few
times a week to help out. One of them actually pulled out her stack of
magazines to read during class time and told the kids: "go ahead and work on
the lesson, I am just a supervisor."
3) Poor administration: The school was supposed to mail assignments to the
University so that the children could get credit for their work. It turns
out that they lost many of the kids' stuff. My kids "completed" few of the
courses they signed up for and even the ones they thought they had completed
remained unfinished according to the University's records because the schools
did not send in the assignments. Some courses hardly ever started. For
example: we were asked to buy materials for French which would start in
October. No teacher was assigned and no time was scheduled for French until
mid-March. Then they tried to rushed the kids through one year of French
during the months of April and May.
Basically we got no service for our 4 thousand gourdes per child per month.
It was just babysitting from 8 am to 1 pm. So watch out for schools in
Haiti. If you are going there temporarily with a high school child you are
probably better off just doing the University of Nebraska course at Home
without the additional course or clearly counting on kids to go to school
just to meet friends. Otherwise if you can gain admission to a Haitian
school you are probably better off. Watch out for those Lekol Bolet in U$.