There are families living tents in Haiti, struggling to build their lives back together, hurricane after hurricane and earthquake after earthquake, but in the rural towns of Haiti the view is different. The sun is unbearably hot, but children still willingly pack themselves in non-airconditioned rooms with books in their hands. Their faces are drawn wide in smiles, proud of the blue uniform they are wearing. Nearly 50 of these children pack themselves into this room, while some are in other “classrooms” made up of benches and tarp to shield them from the sun. Although this may seem like terrible conditions for students, it is the reality that some children in Haiti have to face.
The educational environment in Haiti is very broad, ranging from the best government run schools in the city, to tent schools run by nonprofit organizations.
For Pastor Mario Augustave, running his own non-profit organization, tent schools are not an uncommon sight. With his American based non-profit organization, Voices For Haiti, Augustave and his team have gone into his home country and assist it as best as they can, especially when it comes to education in rural communities.
Others running non-profit organizations like Augustave recognize that education is one of the most important issues in Haiti to tackle. “Without the proper education of Haitian children, the country is continually left vulnerable,” Augustave tells me at his pastor’s office at Emmaus Seventh-Day Adventist Church. The church is located in Flatbush, a Brooklyn neighboorhood, with a dense population of Haitian-Americans. “The children are the future, and an illiterate future is almost guaranteed to go nowhere.”
According to the CIA’s World Factbook, the total percentage of people who can read and write in Haiti above 15 years of age is 60.7 percent which is a far cry from other Caribbean countries which are 90 percent and above. These literacy rates are due to a limited amount of schools in the country.
And yet, it seems the Haitian government is not interested in the future of their nation.
According to Sionfonds for Haiti, the government is only responsible for 10 percent of schools in Haiti. Haiti as a whole has only 15, 200 primary schools, of which 90 percent of these schools are non-public and are managed by communities, religious organizations, or NGOs.
“When I was growing up in Haiti, every school I knew was private. I didn’t think there were public schools in our country. I can imagine that it’s worse,” said Adeline Francois, age 46, a current New York resident who lived in Haiti until 1994. “The amount of public schools are probably lower than before.”
Community, religious organization, or NGO – run schools, need constant funding from outside sources – usually United States and Canadian residents – to keep their schools running since they are non-profit organizations. Because they are so reliant from funding from the outside it is difficult for these schools to properly function. Necessities like bathrooms and plumbing are rare. School supplies like textbooks, notebooks, and pencils are in limited supply, and sometimes teachers cannot be paid. Many are essentially doing volunteer work.
And while these teachers may be teaching students for free, many teachers are not even properly trained to handle a class. According to the World Bank, many teachers are not the most effective at handling a class.
“Most instructional time is spent on lecturing or eliciting responses in unison from the class, and responses were often related to repetition and memorization. Teachers rarely acknowledged or corrected the many incorrect answers or lack of answers noted by observers. These methods have limited effectiveness in teaching children, especially young children, the foundational cognitive skills they need to succeed in school,” says Melissa Adelman and David Evans of the World Bank.
Even with low funds and ineffective teachers, Haiti is still trudging through. Thanks to organizations like Voices For Haiti, there is good work being done in Haiti when it comes to education. According to The World Bank, there is a happy side to this story. Enrollment rates have risen from 78 percent to 90 percent, and tuition fee waivers are being implemented in private schools around Haiti. There is also more engagement with the government and schools to train teachers to better help and engage the classes.
“It is hard,” Augustave says. “But we are doing God’s work in Haiti. Right now I am going around churches in New York to collect funds to build a well at the school. People don’t think they are doing much by putting in a dollar, but to the kids over there in Haiti, it means the world to them.”