Haiti

Haiti did not become an independent republic until 1804. The western half of the island that Columbus baptized Hispaniola in 1492 was a French colony known as Saint-Domingue. Haitian education or society cannot be understood today without examining its past, since the sources of all Haitian institutions lie in its history.

At one point there was exclusivity of education in the colony, where all human effort on the plantation was committed to the exploitation of the land. The agrarian economy's awesome demands in time and energy, the roughness of life in an environment deprived of all commodities, and the brutality of a colonial system that depended for survival on oppression precluded any interest in structured education. Creole or freedmen, the rich planters, who themselves rarely laid claim to even an average education, relied on the mother country for the education of their children, while African slaves were forbidden access to literacy.

Anyone who would put a book in the hands of a slave incurred the risk of heavy penalties. Beginning with the Black Code of 1685, in the reign of Louis XIV, the official position of French authorities was that educating servants had the potential to turn loyal servants into rebels. The colonists feared that once educated, the servant population would challenge their authority, would seek reparations, or worse even, would organize to overthrow their régime.

Since sedition had to be stemmed, Africans were kept in a state of abysmal ignorance. Hilliard d'Auberteuil summarizes the rationale behind this attitude: "The interest and safety of the colony demand that we subject the black race to such contempt that anyone whose origins can be traced back to that race will be covered of an indelible stain down to the sixth generation."

The French Governor of Martinique added to this argument: "The safety of the whites demands that we keep the Negroes in the most profound ignorance." In addition to the fear of revolt, there was a pervasive belief that Africans lacked intellectual qualities, as well as the potential for "progress and perfectibility." Montesquieu, the great philosopher of the Enlightenment, who utilized his sharp wit against slavery, alluded ironically to the opinion prevailing among his contemporaries that the people of Africa possessed inferior faculties, that their cognitive apparatus was not open to knowledge on a human scale, and that, consequently, trying to teach them anything would be pointless.

The Black Code in Article 2, nonetheless, provided for some religious instruction, not on humanitarian grounds, but rather from a need to keep the slave population under control. The Black Code did not achieve its goals, however, since only a few colonists chose to use it as a guide. The majority kept all instruction, religious or otherwise, from the slaves. Most administrators in Saint-Domingue believed that the more educated the slaves, the more difficult it was for them to accept their condition. There were, nonetheless, those who defied the oppressive policies and surreptitiously arranged for their slaves to learn how to read and write, not always because it was fair but, above all, because it was practical. The more educated the slave, the more helpful he could be. It is a known fact that some plantation owners not only encouraged practical training with a view to higher productivity, but also favored more than a rudimentary education, especially when their subject was a nègre à talent (a talented black). These slaveholders believed their investments would pay off when the servants would fulfill functions beyond the work of the land. This was the case with the master of Habitation Bréda, the plantation on which Toussaint Louverture was born.

Louverture was given not only a religious education in Catholicism, but he also learned French, Latin, geometry, drawing, as well as the medicinal virtues of plants. Thanks to his knowledge of herbs, he was able to serve the plantation as medicine man and veterinarian. Later, Louverture became the steward of the Bréda livestock and coachman to his master and, subsequently, joined the French Army as a scout, where he rose through the ranks to become General and finally Commander-in-Chief of Saint-Domingue.

Another case in point is Henry Christophe, a slave who worked as a waiter in a public hotel of Cap Français in Saint-Domingue and was given an education. Christophe later became king of Haiti. These are only two examples of a small privileged group that was fortunate enough to find educational opportunities in the colony.

The forced process by which the African slaves were integrated into the colonial community is another fact that will help post-independent Haiti. This brutal adaptation aimed to discourage a reversal to the native culture, therefore eliminating any rivalry between the old structure and the new one. Its purpose was to ensure the highest loyalty to Creole society and to subject the African to an internalization of French superiority. It was at once a mechanism of defense and an economy of force. The conquest of the mind was needed to consolidate power over a submissive population that outnumbered the colonists and that might one day revolt.

The colonial authorities created an intricate social system based on complexion and adhesion to French culture. With few exceptions, the lighter-skinned individuals occupied the higher echelons of the social ladder. Since these individuals were also French, French language and culture conferred a higher social status. At the bottom of the ladder, the black population, though more active and productive, was heavily taxed for lacking the qualities of a light complexion and a knowledge of French. Blacks were left with no other option but to pursue the ideals of language and culture that were set for them. They did so more or less enthusiastically. It was a stigmatizing experience that left its mark on Haitian society to this day. What added to the trauma was that, in order to motivate a quick acculturation, plantation owners offered the Africans a system of rewards that ranged from a simple reduction of their duties to the granting of freedom.

Religion was also used in acculturation. Baptism was the first step toward assimilation and, once baptized, African slaves became nègres créoles (Creole Blacks), a mark of distinction that carried privileges and denoted their status of being in the colony for some time, and therefore were worthy of everyone's trust. By contrast, the newly arrived, nègres bossales (wild, untamed blacks) were supposedly primitive, because they were still attached to traditional African cultures. The most demeaning tasks were assigned to the bossales who were constantly derided and harassed by the nègres créoles and punished by their masters. Brainwashing, indoctrination, derision, and the whip were the methods used to force Creole culture on the African and to suppress all African traditions brought to the colony.

Acculturation did not entail a systematic teaching or learning of the French language. Having lost their original languages, the Africans were not given opportunities to learn French. Instead, a simplified language that had grown out of the pidgins of triangular trade was adopted by masters and slaves alike. This language, like the people who spoke it, was and is still called Creole. Because of the humiliation associated with its history, it never gained favor with the Haitians, even though it has been the only language available to them throughout their history.

When the Haitians won their independence in 1804, they entered the world with a legacy of ignorance. They had neither a structured system of education nor a strategy to fight illiteracy. Even Toussaint Louverture, when he was Governor of Saint-Domingue, showed no interest in changing the status quo. The Constitution of July 8, 1801, for instance, had no elaborate plans for public instruction. In addition, Haitians had inherited two major handicaps: elitism and the powerful presence of French in their cultural landscape.