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.