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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Kids wonder when school restarts, but education system lies in rubble
RYAN REMIORZ / THE CANADIAN PRESS Enlarge Image
Haitians sift through the wreckage of the country’s revenue ministry.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- While Haiti's education ministry was being demolished by a bulldozer Friday, the country's children were wondering when they might see the inside of a classroom again.
Corpses were still being pulled from the mountain of concrete that was the building from which Haiti's school system was administered.
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Employees were struggling to salvage scraps of paper and documents from the piles of debris being pulled away by a forklift.
It was a similar scene several blocks away at the country's revenue ministry -- the demolished department that used to collect the tax dollars that pay for things like schools.
The Haitian government says half the country's schools and all its biggest universities are gone.
Each collapsed building is another grim reminder of the challenge at hand: Barely half the country can read, and simply restoring the education system to its already lacklustre state will be a historic feat.
The first step will simply be getting classrooms open again. Some will open in existing buildings after they pass engineering inspections, and other temporary ones will inevitably have to be set up outdoors.
"The president is talking about (reopening schools in) March. But, honestly, we don't have any details," said one functionary at the education ministry.
"Almost all our schools, the big schools around here, are totally destroyed. I don't know what we're going to do."
For an idea of the state of Haiti's education system, one need only compare its results with those of the country next door.
The literacy rate in Haiti is 53 per cent. In the Dominican Republic, which shares the same island, it's 87 per cent.
The country next door, which has enjoyed far greater prosperity and political stability, spends almost three times more on education as a share of its Gross Domestic Product.
For now, the least fortunate Haitian children are wandering the streets begging for food and water.
Others are whiling away their days in the tarp-and-bedsheet homeless shelters that have sprouted up in every public square across southern Haiti.
Those who still have homes are spending their days there with parents and grandparents.
-- The Canadian Press
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 30, 2010 A5
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