A School Fights For Life in Battered Haiti

Keisha McNeil
November 19, 2010
2:05pm

In Port-Au-Prince, Haiti at a nonpublic school called College Classique Feminin(known as C.C.F) was one of the first schools to start up after the country's earthquake. Once an elite school catering to lower-middle class girls who are aspired to become doctors, engineers, and teachers of Haiti's future, is fighting for its life. The students lined up in the streets waiting to go through the gates which are around the school. While they entered the gates of their new school, they cheered the absence of the stifling tents in which they had to learn and studied from last spring. Little did they know the school's door bore a frightening scarlet stamp on it form the government engineers who consider the school unsafe. The semi-collapsed central building loomed menacingly over eight portable classrooms that would not fit 13 grades. In spite of the bad news, the school bell rang and the students lined up from kindergartner which worn ribbons in their heads to the seniors who had lip gloss on, formed neat lines in the dusty courtyard. They sing their national anthem "For the country, for our forefathers, let us march united" until the director raised the bullhorn and stated that school will be postponed until next week because more repairs are needed. As the students paused for a brief moment to make sure they were hearing correctly, the next thing you heard was the students moaning in disappointment and some shouted out "No, not good news! Not at all!" Like C.C.F., other battered schools, and university's are struggling to reopen, and stay open, to rebuild, and to retain its students and teachers after the country's earthquake. Hundreds of temporary replacement are still being built by the government, Uniecf, the Digicel Foundation and others. Also the Haiti's reconstruction commission approved a $500 million Inter-American Development Bank project to reconstruct the education sector. In spite of all the damages, before the earthquake Haiti's education system was at its worst, half of the primary school age children were not in school because many of the parents could not afford to sent them.

Haiti school systems definitely needs to be reformed. The government needs to look into providing more traditional public schools which will allow parents who can not afford private schools the opportunity to send their children to school in-spite of their finical ability. The government should also try to lower the tuition rates of its private schools. There is an election coming up on November 28 in Haiti, and I can only hope that the government can come up with a positive solution for there school systems. The citizens of Haiti have been through many struggles with the earthquake they have encounter, with just trying to live day to day, and regrouping their families back together in their communities. They should not have to worry about can they afford to send their children to school to receive a proper education. Hopefully the government will definitely realize, these children are the future of their country. The students also need a solid education to become strong leaders, teachers, doctors, and what every these students have the determination to gain for their future and for the future of their country.


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/15/world/americas/15haiti.html?ref=education