Conversations: Shock-doctrine Schooling in Haiti

Shock-Doctrine Schooling in Haiti: Neoliberalism off the Richter Scale.

The action of taking advantage of people when disaster has struck has been coined as “The Shock Doctrine”.  In this case, it is the children are being taken advantage of.

Education in Haiti wasn’t strong before the 2010 Earthquake, one reason being due to the fact that tuition took nearly half of the income, so parents needed to decide which, if any, of their children would be schooled. This left many unschooled children.  “In 2010, some 90 percent of schools in Haiti were private schools, and according to U.N. statistics……Only about two-thirds of Haiti’s kids were enrolled in primary school before the earthquake, and less than a third reached 6th grade” (p 41).

UNI-CEF reported “80 percent of schools west of Port-au-Prince were

destroyed or severely damaged in the earthquake, and 35 to 40 percent were destroyed in the southeast” (p 41). Leaving 5,000 schools destroyed and around  2.9 million children without any form of  formal education.

Something called the restavèk system has been produced out of this lack of education and abundance of poverty!  The restavèk system  is “an estimated 225,000 Haitian youth living in a state of bondage” in the form of working in homes, or as I witnessed when living overseas, working in the streets to sell whatever items they could (p 42).

For most people, Haiti’s broken school system — which was literally buried under tons of rubble — is an incomprehensible horror. But for a few, the rubble looked more like building blocks, and the earthquake created a big break for business.

A man named Paul Vallas, who oversaw schools in Chicago and Philadelphia and later helped to rebuild schools in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, saw what was happening in Haiti after the earthquake and saw it as an opportunity. Some would say a good opportunity to help rebuild a fallen system and others would say that he saw a good business opportunity. 

When reading the article, it mentioned that the city of New Orleans was overtaken by private charter schools and public school teachers lost their jobs. If the schools had been free to the public, I would say that was at least a win for the kids even if the teachers lost their jobs (although that’s outrageous!), but if the schools were not free, it just contributes to off-balance power. 

Vallas continued the same imbalance  in Haiti by maintaining the 90% of schools as private schools, but  with the Haitian government financing the private schools based on the charter school model he created in New Orleans (p. 42). It seemed that the program didn’t work as planned because there was a misuse of funds and many broken promises:

“In addition to suspicions of cor-ruption, the amount paid to the schools is clearly inadequate, the payments don’t arrive on time, and the professors are underpaid. Also, most of the schools visited by journalists had not received the promised manuals and school supplies,

items crucial for assuring a minimally acceptable standard of education,” according to the HGW. (p 43)

Additionally, he used trailers that were known to easily become moldy and stated: “There are ways to create a classroom learning environment that can be a superior learning environment, even if that classroom is in an inadequate building.” I would agree with that, but not at the cost of health! When that becomes a factor, you don’t turn the other way! 

As I continued reading, I learned a lot about our history with Haiti that I have never heard before. For example,  “It was Haiti’s uprising and eventual defeat of Napoleon that led to the nearly doubling in size of the United States.”  Despite Haiti’s positive contribution to our history, we have not reciprocated with positive actions. The US acts as if they are helping, but it’s not the case, instead we make decisions based on fear and selfishness! For example, the  “CEPR’s 2018 report reveals foreign aid to Haiti is still primarily being used to enrich U.S. corporation (p. 44). It went on to explain how the United States has been making decisions to keep Haiti at a distance and not lending a helping hand as far back as 1804. 

It is long past the time to  analyze our motivations and make right what is wrong. But how do we do this? The author, Hogopian, suggests: 

We need nothing less than a new

Haitian revolution that connects with the

movement for Black lives in the United

States and brings down the structures of

neoliberalism and of racism across the

African diaspora.

What do you think? 

Citation:

HAGOPIAN, J. (2018). Shock- doctrine schooling in haiti: neoliberalism off the richter scale. ReThinking Eduction:  Protecting Students in the Era of ICE, 33(1), 40–45.

Conversations: The Silenced Dialogue:Power of Pedagogy in Educating Other People's Chidren

 

NOTE: I have chosen this graphic because it’s how I felt the entire article! I don’t know that my thoughts flow smoothly after reading this because there is so much to unpack. 

My immediate thoughts are in green

My takeaways/ understanding are in blue

I have previously mentioned that there is an heir that American people carry  (it’s quite possible that it runs deeper in white people, but that isn’t something I can factually state) that we know it all and we shouldn’t be questioned. This article seems to capture the same idea when it stated (pg 21):

 

I found that I was very aware of my thoughts during each part of this article. It was hard for me to not personally feel she was talking about me since it was about teachers and white middle class people - all categories I identify with.  I wanted to be sure I was sifting my thoughts through various perspectives and considerations and NOT just be offended or Say “No, that’s not true!” Because even in the above quote, I was aware that I was speaking to the author.  “I do like things my way and am headstrong, yes….not sure that’s because I am white though, I think it’s a personality and human thing. I don’t think I know what is right for everyone’s child…..I like to ask people questions about their experiences and see how I can apply them to my life or what changes I need to consider….I feel like you are generalizing.” I had to stop and analyze my thoughts and “hear” the heart of what she was saying when thinking about what she was writing so that I wouldn’t stop at my first gut reaction.

 

Video: Metacognition: An Important Skill for Modern Times | Brendan Conway-Smith | TEDxCarletonUniversity

When considering the five areas of power, I was very interested in number one: Issues of power are enacted in the classroom. I would like to have read more about teachers having power over students because while her subpoints under this topic were clear to me, I wasn’t as clear on how a teacher’s role exhibited the culture of power - aren’t we just doing our job by teaching the curriculum? And then later on in the article as I read, it seemed that only white teachers were a source of “Issues of Power” and that it’s not the case if the teacher were a Person of Color. I was left wanting more information and examples on how/what I needed to change.

When the author states that people that aren’t part of the power culture want something else, I found that I felt limited or misgrouped because as I read on, I, too, wanted what she was describing (pg 29): 

Although I want this, I don’t feel the school's role will make or break my son’s ability to fit in and achieve what he’d like, which I believe is the difference. Maybe this is a make or break situation for some families. Perhaps they see education as their foundation/means to assimilate. I concluded this when reading: “We  understand how to improvise, how to express ourselves creatively. When I am in the classroom, I am not looking for that, I’m looking for structure, the more formal language” (pg 32).  

(pg 29).

So I found myself asking, what is needed to be successful in a white man’s world? What might this parent be thinking her child is missing that I need to be teaching? How does that parent want me to teach it?  

It made a lot of sense to me that the student whose teacher just had them peer write and correct felt like she was teaching nothing….as I read it, I, too, thought she was being lazy and not doing her job. Additionally, as a student, I would be furious. Given this, I didn’t see this as a white power example. 

I learned when I was in school to become a teacher that we shouldn’t ask students to do something when we want them to do something because they could say yes or no to the question. The director told me, “We are worried we will sound rude by directing them.  In our culture we think it’s polite to ask someone to do something so we don’t sound so demanding: “Can you get your book out please?” The student could say yes or no or may think it’s an option. If we are not giving them a choice, we need to be direct.” This idea was also communicated in the article.

(37).

I have a lot to say about the style of leading children by some groups of adults and its effects on the classroom and life in general. Children need structure and clear expectations. They need to know there are limits and natural consequences.

When it came to correcting a student's writing on page 37 and 38, my immediate response was “yes, we should be correcting students and preparing them for the world. Someone who can’t write grammatically correct or present clear ideas is WAY less likely to be hired because they are judged by what they present. As educators, it’s our job to teach them. I have heard some people say that we need to respect one's cultural speech and not correct them if they aren’t using the accurate English grammar. I believe this is what the parents were discussing when they said they want more. 

Conclusion: I have sat in many diversity talks but left wondering how my role as a teacher plays into the institutional systems and what I can do about it. I found that at the end of this article, I still felt left with little understanding, but it did start to give me some direction. I also felt misrepresented and generally grouped with people I don’t fully identify with due to my life experiences living overseas and being married interracially, NOT that this undoes 100% of my upbringing in the white culture. 

On page 38, it was stated that if a white candidate doesn’t do well in something that it’s just seen as that person having the problem, but if a person of color exhibits a problem they become a representative of their cultural group. I don’t believe that is just a white perspective of others, but a human perspective of other groups of people. I say this because many of my Dominican friends will generalize white people into groups based on one white person they have met. I don’t think anyone should generalize a group of people based on one human’s actions. However, in this article, I felt grouped as having certain points of views or characteristics simply because I am white. After reading pages 46 and 47, I started to feel like she was placing responsibilities on both sides which I thought was a more accurate portrait of what needs to take place.

My overall takeaway is that we, as white teachers, should not assume that students come in with all of the same knowledge and we need to be able to scaffold and support and not just assume a student isn’t capable or is a behavioral problem. We need to get to know the cultures of the students in our room. To not do this, is to assume we know best or whatever we are doing is right and they need to assimilate to us and not us to them.  

In my understanding, Lisa Delpit’s main arguments are found on page 24 and page 30 when she states: 

 (pg 24).

(pg 30).