[lg policy] Haiti’s new policy for teaching in Kreyòl

Wed Jul 22 15:17:11 UTC 2015

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   3 Questions: Michel DeGraff on Haiti’s new policy for teaching in Kreyòl

MIT scholar, and advocate of native-language instruction, backs linguistic
change.

Peter Dizikes | MIT News Office
July 20, 2015
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Comment

*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. *MIT News* recently discussed the policy
shift with him. *

*Q.* Why is it important to help Haitian students learn in Kreyòl?

*A.* 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

*Q.* What are the specifics of this new agreement?

*A.* 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

*Q.* How does your understanding of Kreyòl as a linguist undercut some of
the justifications offered in the past for French-language use and
instruction?

*A.* 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 *Homo sapiens*.

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.

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.

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.
http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/3-questions-michel-degraff-haiti-teaching-kreyol-0720

-- 
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+

 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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