Mother-tongue books in Haiti: The power of Kreyòl in learning to read and in reading to learn

DeGraff opens with the finding that about half of Haiti's population is illiterate and that at most one child in ten who enters first grade will graduate from high school. Education is carried out mostly in French, which is spoken fluently by at most 5 percent of the population, while Haitian Creole (Kreyòl), spoken by all, is largely excluded from the school system despite legislation, official curricula and civil society efforts.

The article reports results from the project Mother Tongue Books: Learning to Read in Haiti, funded by the All Children Reading initiative and World Vision, and carried out in schools including the Lekòl Kominotè Matènwa on La Gonâve. Using the Early Grade Reading Assessment, it reports third-grade comprehension averages from 31 percent in the lowest-performing school to 77 and 84 percent in the best, compared with 17 percent in an earlier study. The author concludes that systematic classroom use of Kreyòl promotes academic success, and argues that the state should require schools to use student-centered Kreyòl-based active learning for reading and writing and for every other subject. The conclusion adds that access to primary school rose from 47 percent in 1993 to 88 percent in 2013, so the key question is now quality.