A Light on the Hill:
The Matènwa Community Learning Center
by Dr. Steven Werlin

It's easy to be depressed when you enter a typical school here in Haiti. Very often the space is cramped and dark. There aren't enough books, and the books seem poor. Children are jammed shoulder-to-shoulder on rickety, uncomfortable benches. The students sit straight in those rows, reciting or copying text that their teacher has written on the blackboard. These texts are in French, and the children don't understand them. A few of the students might be in a corner, kneeling with their bare knees on a stone or gravel floor as punishment for something.

The Matènwa Community Learning Center is nothing like any of that. It's a beautiful place, all the more striking if you have images of these other places in the back of your mind. It sits on the top of the hill in the rural community of Matènwa, on the remote Haitian island of Lagonav. Water is limited here and must be collected from a distant spring or an occasional rain. It's arid, deforested, and poverty surrounds the place. But the school is beautiful. It's not fancy or luxurious-you'd hardly even call it pretty-but it's beautiful nonetheless, for the life that fills it. Let me explain. The Matènwa Community Learning Center is a large, open sectagonal structure with a high roof. There are no interior walls. In the center, the floor is raised up a full step. Over that center there is a small second story office. When I enter the school, I like to walk straight to that center. I stand there and slowly turn around. I take in all 360 degrees. Everywhere, on every side of me, children are laughing and working. Their teachers are talking with them, not at them. And they are smiling, enjoying the kids. The kids are sitting in large circles, in horseshoes, or scattered in little groups.

The stunning uniformity of many Haitian schools-teacher in front, standing or seated at a desk, and children in rows facing forward or hunched over their notebooks, the recitation, the punishment-is replaced by diversity. In one corner, a teacher will be sitting in a circle with a group of her students discussing something. In another, students will be writing at tables, as the teacher talks with one or two. In another, students will be leading a discussion. Each class is doing something different. And all around the room the language of instruction is Creole, the language that the children understand, the language they can speak, the language in which they can ask questions. What one sees is life-the life of the mind, of course, but a lot of plain old liveliness too.

For another thing, the strange music, the odd poetry one hears at almost any other Haitian school is entirely absent. That music is the music of nonsense verse, the rhythmic chanting of uncomprehended texts in French. French is the predominant language of instruction in Haitian schools, a striking fact since few Haitians know it well. That verse is charming when you first hear it because the voices that chant it are very much alive, in a way. But the more one hears it, and the more one considers what's happening to children as they spew forth sounds they do not understand, and the more you realize that it is in such empty repetition that the children are investing their very strong desire to learn, the more frustrated you become, the angrier you become.

That music, however, is not the music of Matènwa, where conversations among teachers and students are loud. They are animated, chaotic and unpredictable, because it's fixed only by the questions and the enthusiasms of those who are speaking it.

And another difference: at the Matènwa Community Learning Center students are neither beaten nor humiliated. These are regular events at most Haitian schools. It is a common sight upon entering a school here, to see one or several students kneeling inside or, worse, kneeling outside under the hot sun. Perhaps they talked out of turn or didn't know their lessons well enough. Also common are beatings with belts or sticks or other devices. Not only has the Matènwa Community Learning Center banished such measures from its own grounds, but it is actually serving as a model for neighboring schools, demonstrating that students can be motivated to learn without the constant fear of corporeal punishment.

This school did not appear out of nowhere. It was founded in 1996, with the vision and energy of its Haitian co-director, Abner Sauveur, and his American co-director, Chris Low. Through their efforts and the commitment of the 8 teachers in the school, 130 students are currently being served from kindergarten through sixth grade. Most of these students are from families so poor that, were it not for this school, they would not be able to attend school anywhere. Students also benefit from a food program that provides the children one meal each day.

The Matènwa Community Learning Center is not yet self-sustaining. It continues to need outside support. Through Beyond Borders' Read-A-Thon for Literacy, students in the U.S. are now helping raise funds to further the work of the school. Beyond Borders also now serves as the fiscal agent for the school, helping channel support from individuals who are committed to the dream of making the Matènwa Community Learning Center a model from which schools and literacy centers all over Haiti can learn.

Steven Werlin is the Academic Dean at Shimer College near Chicago, Illinois.