Education in Haiti: Alternatives for Social Transformation

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

At present, Haiti stands at a crossroads. The past five years have been marked by enormous social discontent, extensive political protests, assassination of Haiti's president, record levels of inflation that have resulted in extensive food insecurity, increasing violence (including record rates of kidnapping and murder in 2023), and natural disasters that have severely impacted an already fragile humanitarian landscape. There is currently no elected government, and it is estimated that 80% of the capital, Port-au-Prince, is currently gang-controlled. Many schools have been closed for extensive periods of time in the capital and in many other areas due to social unrest, gang violence, and a resurgence of Cholera (UNICEF, 2022). This is in addition to the thousands of school-age children and youth who are not enrolled or who have not been able to attend school consistently. What is, or can be, the role of education in Haiti, now and in the future? What new ways of conceptualizing education are needed to promote societal development and human flourishing under conditions of poverty, violence, and extreme social unrest? What does the case of Haiti have to teach us about education in a world where conflict over fundamental visions of what a good society looks like are increasingly common?
This panel brings together some of the leading scholars and practitioners doing innovative work on education in Haiti with a goal to advancing new narratives that have the potential to promote societal transformation, national development, and increased human well-being. It is well known that the current formal educational system has largely failed to serve as a motor for national development. Thousands of children remain out of school, 85% of schools are private (and thus out of reach financially for many parents), instruction is often in French (which the vast majority of teachers nor their pupils understand with any fluency), teachers are underprepared and absenteeism high, materials are sorely lacking, and large numbers of students are over-age. Only 1-2 percent of Haitians manage to reach tertiary education. Of those school age children who are enrolled, drop-out rates are on the order of 10% by grade six and 40% by grade 9 (UNESCO, 2020). While the Haitian Ministry of Education has been working with institutions of higher education within Haiti and with international partners to transform schooling in the country for quite some time, and new efforts such as national teacher certification programs are underway, these efforts have so far not led to significant change for the vast majority of stakeholders or deep transformation in a system that remains dominated by private schooling and colonialist cultural and linguistic ideologies..
This panel challenges current approaches to education in Haiti and broadens the lens to explore teaching and learning through a more multidimensional lens, especially through alternative forms of formal learning as well as informal and non-school based learning. We ask such questions as:
• What can/should education's role be in current movements toward social protest?
• How can indigenous spiritual and cultural traditions (including the arts) offer alternatives to current educational practice?
• What is needed to produce shifts in language ideology and pedagogy to produce competent teachers and successful students?
• What approaches to pedagogy (and schooling ) can work against colonialist mentalities and entrenched social class inequalities to foster a more equitable society?

The panelists will explore education through a variety of conceptual lenses, with a critical emphasis on the cultural, social, and linguistic domains that underlie education that can lead to social transformation in Haiti. They will discuss current change efforts as well as challenges and new directions that have emerged from their work. The goal is to generate a collective will and knowledge toward producing new theories of change that can support Haitian aspirations for the future.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Chair

• Diane M Hoffman, University of Virginia

Individual Presentations

• Empowering Haitian youth: Building diasporic literacy programs with a Vodou theoretical framework - Charlene Desir, Nova Southeastern University

• Becoming oneself, education and social change: the case of Haiti - Marky Jean-Pierre, University of The Bahamas

• Schools as centers for societal transformation - Christine Wei-ying Low, Friends of Matènwa

• Everyday learning in Haiti: Towards transformative thinking about education - Diane M Hoffman, University of Virginia