[Olpc-Haiti] [RE] Where to find Haitian Kréyol professional translators

[Michel DeGraff]

Re:

> We will probably want to include this French manual in our 
> distribution in  Haiti.  Many / (most?) teachers in Haiti read French 
> better than they do Kreyòl.

Perhaps the most construstive and progressive way to think about this is
in terms of what the eventual objectives should be for the typical
Haitian child.  It seems to me that one objective is to promote
constructivist/constructionist/experiential learning à la
Piaget/Papert/Dewey whereby students are allowed to use their own
creative resources as they contribute to their own learning in a
non-authoritative mode.  This is very different from the traditional
rote-memorization model that most Haitian teachers are used to.  So here
we have a unique opportunity to contribute to fundamental change to
education in Haiti.

One non-negotiable prerequisite for this unleashing of individual
creativity from Haitian children, instead of rote memorization, is the
use of the kids' native language.  If so, then teachers as well should
be brought on board on that mission to promote Kreyòl at _all_ stages
in the learning process for Kreyòl-speaking children.  In turn, this
entails the necessity of manuals in Kreyòl in order to ensure that the
teachers themselves are well versed in the Kreyòl terminology,
interfaces and courseware that they will be using to help the children
learn.

Furthermore, as far as I can tell, the majority of Haitian teachers in
Haiti are _vastly_ more comfortable in Kreyòl than they are in French. 
Besides, the Kreyòl orthography, which its systematic relationship
between sounds and letters, is more logical and systematic than French
orthography, which is relatively more opaque.  Thus, with an adequate
amount of training, native Kreyòl speakers can become competent Kreyòl
writers---much faster than in French.

Given the facts above, manuals in French for XO pilots in places such as
La Gonave (which is where the next XO pilot is scheduled) would
introduce yet another severe cognitive bottleneck (and another "class
bias"?) in the instruction of monolingual Kreyòl-speaking
children---the numerical majority among children in Haiti.

I hope this makes sense.  The facts themselves are pretty well
established.  But logic is sometimes muddled by ideology and politics.

                                 -michel.
_____________________________________________________________________
MIT Linguistics & Philosophy  77 Massachusetts Ave Cambridge MA 02139
degraff at MIT.EDU http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/people/faculty/degraff
_____________________________________________________________________



----- Message from jrigdon at researchonline.net ---------
    Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 06:22:06 -0500
    From: John Rigdon <jrigdon at researchonline.net>
Reply-To: John Rigdon <jrigdon at researchonline.net>
Subject: Re: [Olpc-Haiti] [RE] Where to find Haitian Kréyol profes 
sional translators
      To: Adam Holt <holt at laptop.org>, olpc-haiti at lists.laptop.org


> We will probably want to include this French manual in our distribution in
> Haiti.  Many / (most?) teachers in Haiti read French better than they do
> Kreyòl.
>
> Kreyòl pale, Kreyòl konprann?
> (I speak Creole, but do I understand Creole? - Thanks Michel)
>
> John Rigdon
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Olpc-haiti mailing list
> Olpc-haiti at lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-haiti
>


----- End message from jrigdon at researchonline.net -----