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<h1 itemprop="name" class="">3 Questions: Michel DeGraff on Haiti’s new policy for teaching in Kreyòl </h1>
<p id="article-summary"><span itemprop="description">MIT scholar, and advocate of native-language instruction, backs linguistic change.</span>
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<span itemprop="author">Peter Dizikes | MIT News Office</span>
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<span itemprop="datePublished" content="2015-07-20">July 20, 2015</span>
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<div class=""><div class=""><div class=""><p><em>This
month, Haiti’s government announced a new policy to educate students in
Kreyòl, the native language of most Haitians, rather than French, the
language traditionally used in schools. Introducing Kreyòl-language
instruction has been a cause of Michel DeGraff, a professor of
linguistics at MIT and a native of Haiti. </em>MIT News<em> recently discussed the policy shift with him. </em></p>
<p><strong>Q.</strong> Why is it important to help Haitian students learn in Kreyòl?</p>
<p><strong>A.</strong> Research has shown that we learn best in the
languages we speak most fluently. In Haiti, at least 95 percent of the
population is fluent in Kreyòl only. The use of any other language of
instruction is a recipe for academic failure. This failure becomes a
national tragedy when it repeats itself generation after generation,
with Kreyòl-speaking children being taught in French.</p>
<p>According to research in cognitive science, becoming a good reader
involves a “virtuous triangle” that seamlessly connects three sets of
linguistic representations: letters on the page (“graphemes”), sounds in
the corresponding language (“phonemes”), and word meanings
(“semantics”). This triangle is most effective when all three —
graphemes, phonemes, and semantics — pertain to the reader’s native
language.</p>
<p>When Haitian children who speak only Kreyòl are taught to read in
French (often by teachers who themselves are not fluent in French), the
graphemes on the page relate to one language (French) while the phonemes
and semantics in the child’s mind relate to another language (Kreyòl).
So the triangle is “broken,” and the child, at best, will manage to
parrot French sounds without adequate understanding of the text.</p>
<p>The matter is actually more complicated, because French words often
sound somewhat like Kreyòl even when the corresponding meanings are
substantially distinct. This “broken triangle” is the scientific
explanation for one key factor underlying the massive failure of Haiti’s
school system: Most Haitian children are never given the opportunity to
become fluent readers. They never learn to read well, so they can’t
read to learn.</p>
<p>Thanks to a National Science Foundation grant, the data that I have
collected at the Lekòl Kominotè Matènwa (LKM), a school in La Gonave,
Haiti, show that Haitian children who are taught in Kreyòl achieve much
higher learning gains than their counterparts who learn in French. Once
children have strong foundations in their native language, they are
better equipped to learn all academic subjects, including second
languages such as French.</p>
<p>Last year (2014), all 25 sixth-graders at LKM passed the official
exam administered by the state (compared with an overall success rate of
71 percent). What’s less measurable, but also profoundly important, is
the dignity of these Haitian children at LKM, whose joyful creativity is
set free when they can learn in their native Kreyòl.</p>
<p>As for mathematics and science, the logical thinking that is
necessary to succeed in these fields requires a great deal of reasoning
and communication. The effective use of language is, thus, an essential
ingredient there as well. In the NSF-funded MIT-Haiti Initiative, we’ve
documented how teachers and students perform better when pedagogical
resources, especially those for learning science and mathematics, are in
Kreyòl.</p>
<p><strong>Q.</strong> What are the specifics of this new agreement?</p>
<p><strong>A.</strong> This is the first agreement between Haiti’s
Ministry of National Education and Professional Training (MENFP) and the
newly created Haitian Creole Academy (“Akademi Kreyòl Ayisyen,” or
AKA), of which I am a founding member; AKA was inaugurated in December
2014. AKA’s mandate includes the establishment of conventions around the
use of Kreyòl and the promotion of Kreyòl in all sectors of society.</p>
<p>The core objective of this new agreement between MENFP and AKA is to
further promote Kreyòl, and Kreyòl speakers’ linguistic rights. MENFP
and AKA have now created a formal framework to work together to expand
the use of Kreyòl as a teaching tool at all levels of Haiti’s system,
from kindergarten to university. This also entails the standardization
of Kreyòl writing, and the training of teachers for instruction of, and
in, Kreyòl.</p>
<p>I am both excited and anxious about the concrete steps to implement
this agreement. In Haiti’s history we’ve had too many laws, decrees, and
agreements that have never been implemented or whose implementation has
been sabotaged from the get-go. Take, say, Article 5 of Haiti’s 1987
constitution, which made Kreyòl an official language alongside French
and which recognized Kreyòl as the sole language that binds the Haitian
people together. Also consider Article 40 of the same constitution,
which requires the government to communicate information about all state
matters in both Kreyòl and French. These articles of the constitution
are violated on a daily basis by the government, which most often — and
especially in writing — communicates in French only. The Akademi Kreyòl
Ayisyen itself, which was decreed in the 1987 constitution, took 27
years to become reality.</p>
<p>However, MENFP Minister Nesmy Manigat has shown an extraordinary
amount of political will to promote Kreyòl. He is wholeheartedly
supporting AKA and its agenda, as shown in the signing, on July 8, of
this MENFP-AKA agreement. As he explained at the signing ceremony,
Haitian schools have for too long wasted the potential of too many
students by ignoring their native Kreyòl, and he trusts that this
agreement will help ensure that all Haitian students have the same
opportunity to succeed in school.</p>
<p>As a member of the administrative council of AKA, I am helping set up
a workshop series on the standardization of Kreyòl writing. We’ve had
an official Kreyòl alphabet since 1979. But there are many loose threads
remaining when it comes to establishing a standard writing system. Once
these conventions are set in place — a major task that will necessarily
take time — then we’ll start working on teacher-training workshops to
spread the standardized writing system among teachers, students, and the
general population.</p>
<p><strong>Q.</strong> How does your understanding of Kreyòl as a
linguist undercut some of the justifications offered in the past for
French-language use and instruction?</p>
<p><strong>A.</strong> One reason that has been offered to justify
excluding Kreyòl from formal education is the claim that Kreyòl is a
structurally lesser language that does not afford the same capacity as
French to express complex concepts in science, mathematics, philosophy,
and so on. One dogma in linguistics is that Creole languages are the
world’s “simplest” languages because of their origins from “Pidgin”
languages. Some linguists have even gone so far as to compare Creole
languages to the earliest human languages spoken by <em>Homo sapiens</em>.</p>
<p>My linguistic research has argued against such claims, which I’ve
given the umbrella term of “Creole exceptionalism.” I’ve shown in a
series of research articles that such claims are empirically and
theoretically untenable. The development paths and structures of Creole
languages are on a par with their counterparts for languages such as
English and French. My linguistics research shows that English and
French, given their “hybridity” and structural distance from their
respective ancestor languages (Proto-Germanic and Latin), could be
considered more “Creole” than Haitian Kreyòl! Really, there is no
linguistic reason why Creole languages should be excluded from the
classroom — or from the family of “normal” human languages.</p>
<p>In addition, the MIT-Haiti Initiative has provided living proof that
Kreyòl is perfectly usable as a language of instruction for advanced
mathematics, physics, biology, and more. Better yet, the use of Kreyòl
in the classroom improves the quality of teaching. We’ve been
documenting such improvement with Haitian students and faculty who have
participated in our NSF-funded work in Haiti since 2010.</p>
<p>So, indeed, the use of Kreyòl should be embraced as a powerful tool
for development at all levels of Haiti’s education system and beyond, in
every sector of Haitian society.</p>
<a href="http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/3-questions-michel-degraff-haiti-teaching-kreyol-0720">http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/3-questions-michel-degraff-haiti-teaching-kreyol-0720</a><br></div></div></div><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
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