[RSCT] Teaching about Haiti

[bbpdx at aol.com]

Dear Rethinking Schools friends,

All of us have been stunned by the immensity of the devastation in Haiti as 
a result of the earthquake -- compounded by centuries of colonialism, 
slavery, exploitation, racism, U.S. occupation, dictatorship, and intervention. I 
encourage you to use this listserv to post resources, stories, and 
questions about teaching the history and contemporary reality of Haiti. Toward that 
end, Teaching for Change has posted a collection of resources at its site. 
(Thanks to Deborah Menkart for assembling these, by the way.) Click on 
http://www.teachingforchange.org/publications/haiti.   Just posted today is a pdf 
of Teaching for Change's 1994 booklet, "Teaching About Haiti."

The best ongoing source of analysis that I've found has been Democracy 
Now!, which had several excellent shows last week. On Friday, TransAfrica 
founder Randall Robinson, offered a brief thumbnail sketch of the history of Haiti 
that might be used in class. One thought would be to contrast the coverage 
of Democracy Now! with the coverage of, say, the ABC Nightly News with Diane 
Sawyer. ABC has featured lots of heart rending on-the-ground stories, but 
has raised no questions about why Haiti is so poor, why so many people from 
the countryside have flocked to the cities -- in short, they've treated the 
catastrophe there as if history is irrelevant. Democracy Now! has also 
featured lots of eyewitness reports, but these have been grounded in historical 
context that helps make us aware that this is not purely a natural disaster.

A few other teaching resources/ideas:

-- In the Rethinking Schools book, Rethinking Globalization, the first 
essay we include is Jean-Bertrand Aristide's "Globalization: A View from Below" 
(p. 8) that describes the impact of Haiti's incorporation into the global 
economy.

-- One place to begin looking at Haiti with students would be with the 
original inhabitants of the island -- the Tainos. Columbus describes them as 
well fed, prosperous, happy -- "the best people in the world," he writes at one 
point. Spanish priests remarked that they'd never seen Tainos fighting with 
each other -- in stark contrast to life in Spain. (See materials in 
Rethinking Columbus.) So how does Haiti go from being prosperous and tranquil to 
being perhaps the poorest country in the Americas? That's a question that 
students could take up. One resource that I've used is the comic history 
"Colonialism in the Americas: A Critical Look." (See 
http://www.zinnedproject.org/?s=colonialism+in+the+americas.) A page of this is adapted in the "Teaching 
About Haiti" booklet.

Finally, in the interests of getting teaching material out, even in rough 
draft form, attached is a role play that Rethinking Schools editor Linda 
Christensen developed several years ago. It is focused around independence from 
France and the French demand for financial compensation. It's still in draft 
form. There are not "instructions" included for completing the role play, 
but you could use any number of Rethinking Schools published role plays as a 
"template" for running this one. A number of teachers in the Portland area 
have used it successfully.

Rico Gutstein of Teachers for Social Justice in Chicago recently posted a 
note to this listserv urging people to support the Haiti Emergency Relief 
Fund  at: http://www.haitiaction.net/About/HERF/1_12_10.html. Please give what 
you can.

Again, please post teaching ideas about Haiti, even if these are not 
fleshed out. 

Best, 

Bill Bigelow (bbpdx at aol.com)
Rethinking Schools
www.rethinkingschools.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.criticalteach.org/pipermail/rs_criticalteach.org/attachments/20100118/460b4d1d/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Haiti Independence .zip
Type: application/zip
Size: 21246 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.criticalteach.org/pipermail/rs_criticalteach.org/attachments/20100118/460b4d1d/attachment.zip>