a1831: Educational Experiences (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: riwilson <RIWILSON@maf.org>

        Working in education in Haiti is both rewarding and frustrating.
     It is rewarding because the students are very diligent.  They WANT
     education.
        In our "lekol biblik" we have students who have finished high
     school and those who have not.  We also have students who are enrolled
     in various professional schools (law, education, and medicine) at the
     same time they are enrolled in ours.  But they all have one thing in
     common--enthusiasm.
        But with the enthusiasm are some problems that cause frustration.
     One of these is critical thinking (at least that's what we call it
     here in the U.S.).  Haitian students are excellent at memory work.
     They are used to that.  But for many the next problem is making
     conclusions and/or analogies.
        If I give them one or two words from a verse of scripture they can
     find it almost immediately.  But if I ask them to draw a conclusion or
     relationship between two or three verses it is very difficult for
     them.  The longer they are with us in school the better some become at
     this.
        We teach a course in Aristotelian logic which really helps them.
     Because our facilities are limited (size wise) class size is also
     limited so we must limit student numbers.  We always have more
     students wanting the course than we can accomodate.
        One observation as a result of comparison.  Haitians stress rote
     memory in education.  The U. S. stresses critical thinking.  If we
     could combine both systems in both countries so that early on rote
     memory of information is stressed and then critical thinking
     introduced later on we might have really great results for both
     countries.

     Richard Wilson