The power of Creole

Beneath Haitis problems lies a deep conflict with its own language. An MIT professor has a bold plan to fix that.

July 24, 2011|By Leon Neyfakh

When Michel DeGraff was a young boy in Haiti, his older brother brought home a notice from school reminding students and parents of certain classroom rules. At the top of the list was “no weapons.” And right below it, DeGraff still remembers: “No Creole.” Students were supposed to use French, and French only.

It was like this all over the country, and still is. Despite the fact that the vast majority of Haitian children grow up hearing and speaking exclusively Haitian Creole—the language used in their villages and homes, in their music, and in their proverbs, jokes, and jingles—the minute they start school they are forced to start all over in a language they don’t know. French is the language of Haiti’s tiny ruling class, and for children who come from that world, this poses no problem. But for all the others, being forced to use French makes it nearly impossible to learn. Many students just stop talking in class, going silent. And according to an estimate from the Ministry of Education, less than a third of students who enter first grade reach sixth grade, and only 10 percent of those who start high school pass the exam that is given at the end.

A language gap in the classroom may seem like a modest problem compared to the rest of what ails Haiti: the earthquake that ravaged the country, the hunger that cripples its communities, and the extreme political instability and violence that have dominated its history over the past 200 years. But for DeGraff and other Haitian thinkers who are trying to figure out how to heal the bruised and damaged country, it sits at the very heart of the problem.

“Haiti will never be able to rise to its potential if you have 90 percent of Haitians who cannot be instructed properly,” DeGraff said. “Once you open up that reservoir, what can happen? So many things can happen….Imagine how many well-prepared minds you would have to try to solve the country’s problems.”

DeGraff is now an associate professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and he is using his influence to try to destroy the barrier that essentially fences off most of Haiti’s children from a real education. For the past three years, he has been involved with an experimental Creole-language school there, and works tirelessly in both Haiti and the United States to promote an unusual and ambitious idea: that in order to solve some of the troubled nation’s most intractable problems—to breathe life into its economy, to rebuild its infrastructure, to make progress fighting crime and disease—the Haitian people must transform their relationship with their native language.

The power of Creole

Beneath Haitis problems lies a deep conflict with its own language. An MIT professor has a bold plan to fix that.

Beneath Haitis problems lies a deep conflict with its own language. An MIT professor has a bold plan to fix that.