CREOLE is the mother tongue in Haiti, but children do most of their schooling in French. Two hundred years after Haiti became the world’s first black-led republic, is the use of French holding the nation back?
“The percentage of people who speak French fluently is about five percent, and 100 percent speak Creole,” says Chris Low, co-founder of an experimental school, the Matenwa Community Learning Center, which has broken with tradition, and conducts all classes in Creole.
Educating children in French may work for the small elite who are fully bilingual, she argues, but not for the masses.
Most linguists would share her view – that education in vernacular languages is best, says Prof Arthur Spears, a linguist and anthropologist at City University in New York, and an expert on Creole. “That is what children arrive at school speaking, and it’s obviously going to be better for them to learn in that language,” he says.
Michel DeGraff, a Haitian professor of linguistics based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US, describes educating children in a foreign language as “a well-proven recipe for academic failure”.
He argues that French should be taught in Haiti as a second language – after children have learned basic literacy skills in Creole.
“Learning to first read and write in a foreign language is somewhat like a toddler who is forced to start walking with a blindfold, and the blindfold is never taken off,” he told the BBC World Service.
No matter which indicators you pick, Haiti has an appalling record on education. One recent report rated it as the third worst place in the world, after Somalia and Eritrea, to go to school.
It’s estimated that about one-third of children at primary school, and only about one in 10 secondary school.
Prof DeGraff is working with the Matenwa prove the case for mother tongue education, the children there, showing – for example – their maths, when taught in Creole.
But if the weight of expert opinion supports schooling, not all Haitians agree. Interestingly, those most opposed tend to poorest backgrounds, who speak little or no French, school as the best place to correct that.
Twenty-five-year-old Daphnee Charles, who 1% of Haitians who go to university, attributes success to the Catholic primary school her parents – who did not go to selves and speak no French at all.
“You would have [extra] homework if the sisters caught you speaking even during playtime – they didn’t to speak Creole,” she says.
But the tough policy worked she now speaks two languages standard.
“When you can speak two languages, you can have a better job. It can open she says.
Theodule Jean-Baptiste, who is studying medicine, unconvinced.
“Whether we want it or not, we are influenced because of the history of colonialism – this is we can get rid of quickly,” he told the BBC Wdon’t think education should be only in Creole a scientific language.”
The belief is widely held in Haiti that Creole primitive, inferior language – possibly because the days of slavery.
