Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies

Haiti: The Society and Its Environment
ity Protestant leaders and radio media joined Roman Catholics
in public opposition to the government during the political
troubles leading to the fall of Jean-Claude Duvalier.
Education
Haiti's postcolonial leaders announced progressive education
policies, and the constitution of 1805 called for free and
compulsory primary education. Although policy goals were
never fully implemented, early rulers Henry Christophe
(1807-20) and Alexandre Petion (1807-18) constructed
schools. By 1820 there were nineteen primary schools and
three secondary lycees. The Education Act of 1848 created
rural primary schools with a more limited curriculum and
established colleges of medicine and law. A comprehensive
education system was never developed, however, and the emergent
elite who could afford the cost sent their children to
school in France. The signing of the concordat with the Vatican
in 1860 resulted in the arrival of clerical teachers, further
emphasizing the influence of the Roman Catholic Church
within Haiti's best-educated social class. The Roman Catholic
Church became a state church, and Catholic schools turned
into public schools jointly funded by the Haitian government
and the Vatican.
The new teachers, mainly French clergy, concentrated on
developing the urban elite, especially in the excellent new secondary
schools. In the classroom, they promoted an attachment
to France and expounded on Haiti's backwardness. In
the nineteenth century, few priests ventured to rural areas to
educate peasants. In both urban and rural settings, the schools
run by clergy followed a classical curriculum emphasizing literature
and rote learning. The curriculum changed little over
time except during the United States occupation, when authorities
established vocational schools. The elite resisted these
efforts, and the government restored the old system in 1934.
In the 1970s, the Haitian government, with support from the
World Bank (see Glossary) and the United Nations Educational,
Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO),
began to reform its educational system, mostly at the primary
level. In 1978 the government unified educational administration
for the first time by putting rural schools under the same
authority, the Department of National Education, as urban
schools.
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