Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies

Haiti: The Society and Its Environment
schools. In many rural and urban schools, textbooks were in
French, but classroom discussion took place in Creole. The
education reform was intended to boost performance through
instruction in the native language, but many opposed the use
of Creole. Bilingual families believed the use of Creole would
erode their linguistic advantage in society by de-emphasizing
French. Elements of the upper class opposed Creole instruction
since they did not support mass popular education. Many
poor people also opposed the reform because they preferred
the social status of French rather than Creole. The government
eventually declared that students would initially study in Creole
and shift to French when they entered the fifth grade. Most private
schools simply ignored the curriculum reforms. As of the
late 1990s, the education reforms of the late 1970s and early
1980s had never really been implemented as national policy.
In 1996 the Ministry of National Education, Youth, and
Sports completed a draft National Education Plan and held a
national conference to plan for the future of education in
Haiti. The draft plan proposed to expand access to education,
especially in rural areas, and to implement curriculum reform
in keeping with the education reform of 1982.
Adult literacy programs in Haiti have generally emphasized
Creole rather than French. Catholic and Protestant missionaries
first promoted adult Creole literacy in the 1930s and 1940s.
In the 1960s, the government established adult literacy programs
in Creole, and in the mid-1980s the Roman Catholic
Church sponsored nationwide literacy programs. In the late
1990s, grassroots peasant organizations continued to sponsor
adult literacy training in Creole. Community leaders and development
workers use the language in recording the minutes of
meetings and project reports. Growing numbers of monolingual
speakers regularly use Creole to write letters and personal
notes.
There is a small but growing written literature in Creole. Earlier,
most Creole texts were produced by church groups or
community development organizations. Many of these texts
were training materials or church newsletters. Both the Old
Testament and the New Testament are available in Creole. Publications
in Creole now include a broader range of topics,
including news, history, sociopolitical analysis, and sophisticated
literary works, poetry, and novels by well known authors
such as Frank Etienne and Felix Morisseau-Leroy.
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