Cultivating the Best in Their Students

by David Diggs

Good schools nurture a vibrant relationship between two worlds—the world outside the classroom with all its problems and possibilities and the world inside each uniquely gifted student. Traditional schools in Haiti have failed both these worlds.  Students in the typical Haitian classroom spend their days copying, memorizing, and reciting long texts in the colonial language (French) that neither the students nor most of their teachers understand or will ever speak. Curiosity is crushed. Questions are quelled. Original thinking is replaced by fear of beatings and public humiliation.  These schools also fail the outside community. They fail to prepare citizens to take responsibility for building a better future, and they actively prejudice students against their own language and culture and the agrarian life outside the rural classroom. Students become disempowered because they learn that manual labor is beneath them.  Beyond Borders works in partnership with two schools on the island of Lagonav, one of Haiti’s most challenging regions.  These schools are showing other schools how to reach Haiti’s poorest children with quality education.

The Matènwa Community Learning Center for Development was founded by two visionary educators (one Haitian, the other American) in 1993. It stands in sharp contrast to traditional Haitian schooling. Instead of rote memorization, students are encouraged to read with a critical eye and form their own thoughts and opinions.  Instead of instruction in French, the school uses the native language of the students,

Haitian Creole, and introduces French as a second language once students are literate in Creole. Instead of beating students, teachers have learned to enlist student cooperation in managing their classroom.  Instead of prejudicing students against rural life and agricultural work, the school prizes local culture and teaches students sustainable agriculture in model gardens where students produce food for their own consumption.  They also take what they learn home to their families. 

The school is expanding its reach on Lagonav via a network of seven nearby schools. Beyond Borders is partnered with the school in Matènwa and is helping schools in other parts of Haiti send their teachers to Matènwa to learn from this model. 

Improving the quality of education is only half the battle in a country where only about half the children attend school. For the other half, schools are either too far away or too expensive. That’s where another school on Lagonav has shown great vision and leadership.

The Community School of Mòn Ramye is about a two-hour walk from Matènwa in the village of Mòn Ramye.  In 1984 a group of parents pooled their meager resources and started this school. Instead of just using this money to pay salaries, they invested the money in revenue-generating activities that met local needs. Profits from these efforts were used to pay teacher salaries, to invest in the school, and to slowly build the school’s capital. 

Parents gave their time, work, and money to develop an array of income generating activities. They started a grain storage initiative that bought grain grown locally at harvest time at a fair price and then sold it during the “hunger season” at a modest profit. The profit helped fund the school, while the storage initiative moderated fluctuations in grain prices, which reduced hunger by preventing speculators from taking hold of the local market.

By 2000 the program had grown into six additional communities and greatly expanded its equity. Now there are 21 schools invested at different levels in the program. Income generating activities focus on whatever the local communities need most. There’s a livestock program; a warehouse for cement and hardware needed for home construction; millet, corn, and peanut storage; and a reforestation program that generates wood for making planks so communities don’t have to import expensive wood. 

Members of the school committee in Plenn Mapou stand beside the grain they’ve dried and are storing for resale during the “hunger season.” Profits support the school and other local initiatives.

During the 2007-2008 school year, the six schools that have advanced furthest in the program started with roughly $15,000 in working capital. They earned enough money to spend $23,000 to pay teachers, build classrooms, buy school materials, provide three training sessions for all 21 schools in their network, and operate a mobile health clinic. And they ended the year with $20,000 in working capital, which they are using for similar activities this school year. This is a lot of money in a country where the average income of the poorest half of the population is only 44 cents per day. 

Beyond Borders is seeking additional funds both to promote this approach in other parts of Haiti and to carefully supplement the capital these schools have created so they can do more to improve their communities and their schools. 

Another wonderful thing is that these two schools in Matènwa and Mòn Ramye are working together and learning from one another. They are helping build schools that cultivate the best in both the world outside the school and inside their students.

Kindergarten students in the Matènwa school garden learn to plant tomatoes.  Students of all ages work in the garden, learning sustainable agriculture and growing food for the school-meal program. Recently harvested yams weighed up to 29 pounds!