HAITI: Lessons From The Past Need To Be Learned
Leslie John Griffiths is a British Methodist Minister and Life Peer in the House of Lords. Here he sheds light on the history of a people determined from the birth of their country in 1804 to ensure education allows them to be liberated.
I’m delighted to make a small contribution to this journal and to honour the work of the Steve Sinnott Foundation. I became aware of the Foundation’s work through my own work in and for the Caribbean Republic of Haiti. This brought me together with Ann Beatty and, hey presto, we found mutual points of interest and experience that led, without too much delay, to the invitation to write this piece.
Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4) argues for sustainable development and accessible education for all. The trouble with these goals is that they allow us to imagine that they’ve only recently been formulated. Yet my whole life has been focused on this particular goal for half a century and in the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. And it had been a challenge for generations before that. Let me bring readers into the picture.
I’m a Methodist minister and my first appointment on leaving Cambridge was to Haiti. I found myself with responsibility for 48 rural communities spread across the southern peninsula of this, the first black republic in the world. Read William Wordsworth’s astonishing sonnet for Toussaint Louverture to get the spirit of the people of this country at the moment of its birth in 1804. The communities I served were almost inaccessible, the people were largely illiterate, and I had no knowledge of the language they spoke.
President Pétion, an early head of state in Haiti, had invited the Methodist people of the United Kingdom to send missionaries with an expertise in education to help in the building of this new and struggling nation. Two men who’d been formed by the British and Foreign Schools’ Society arrived in 1817 and opened a school on the monitorial principle. The President welcomed this development for, he wrote, “L’Education lève un homme ã la dignité de son être (Education raises a person to their full dignity as a human being).” That aphorism was painted over the entry of all the Methodist schools that were built in the following years. It matches Steve Sinnott’s description of education as “the great liberator.”
In the 1920s, a remarkable Irish missionary named Ormonde McConnell recognised that the education on offer in Haiti was taught in French while the population at large spoke their local Kreyòl. He brought in internationally renowned linguistic experts and, for the very first time, developed an orthography for the local tongue. Soon, schools were being developed in the rural areas as well as in the towns and cities and pupils were being taught in their native language.
In the years I lived in Haiti (1970 – 1980), I had some responsibility for a nation-wide network of schools. For a number of years, I was deputy head of our prestigious Lycée in the capital city. The church, under the direction of Swiss educators, had developed an Institute for the training of rural teachers; it was thoroughly ecumenical and prepared teachers for the most remote communities in the land. They were to teach in both French and Kreyòl. Books were prepared on agriculture, hygiene, community development and such subjects. And in both languages. It was cutting edge pedagogy; the Institute is now almost 60 years old.
All of these developments were intended to offer an education to a population desperately in need of it. It was painful to hear a few months ago that, because of yet more political unrest, it had been impossible to re-open schools after the summer break in October 2019. Sadly, not long after being reopened, schools in Haiti, like many around the world, are once again closed due to the Covid 19 pandemic.
It has been so encouraging to learn that the Steve Sinnott Foundation has been working in Haiti for the last decade. It’s my hope that we can find a way to bring its work into the same orbit as the work I’ve described above.
Education does indeed raise people to the very height of their human potential. This was the case from the beginning of Haiti’s independent history. It remains true now. And it must surely be key to any future well-being towards which the people of Haiti and their friends around the world aspire.
Article from Engage Issue 20.
BY LORD GRIFFITHS OF BURRY PORT • May 21, 2021
How a simple act of practical solidarity is transforming the journey to school in The Gambia’s Central River Region North Policies have been written. Schools have been built. Yet for many children in The Gambia’s Central River Region North, access to education is still measured in kilometres, not opportunity.
‘In a single hour vast tracts of shaded woodland became a jumble of torn trees and upturned soil, exposed to the glare of the summer sun. Such land-clearing events are rare, but forests exhibit remarkable resilience in the face of disaster. I’m told that the Chinese character for ‘catastrophe’ is the same as that which represents the word ‘opportunity’. And, the blowdown, while catastrophic, presented opportunities for many species.’ (Wall Kimmerer, 2003: 89). In the context of a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world (Stein, 2021) what kinds of education for hope might support children’s and young people’s critical engagement in local and global issues? In the spirit of exploring the possibilities of hope further, this short article focuses on the area of global citizenship and sustainabilityrelated education. It will briefly open by sharing commonalities across pedagogical approaches that take up the concept and act of hope more critically, and close by offering reflective questions for educators, with suggestions for further reading. Perhaps it is a kind of hope that is grounded in the present, in future reimagining(s), in ethical solidarity, and an acknowledgement of our deep entanglement with the living metabolism of planet earth 1 our singular home (UNESCO, 2021); a hope that engages with complex root causes and lived realities of multiple overlapping crises in critically reflexive and contextually relevant ways. As McCloskey notes, ‘Hope can fire our collective imagination and critical consciousness as a mainspring to activism and intervention in the world.’ (2025: 3). Commonalities across critical pedagogical approaches to hope include: Acknowledging the context of a ‘seamless single story of progress, development and human evolution’ (Andreotti, V.D.O., 2021b Relating to social and ecological justice and the wellbeing of people and planet Using participatory, action-orientated and inquiry-based learning processes Exploring diverse worldviews and perspectives Practising grounding in the present with opening up possibilities for change (relational, embodied, response-able 2 ) Experiencing ‘struggle’ in different forms (dialogical, selfreflexive, open-ended) Engaging individual and collective agency, action and activism Looking for lifelong and life-wide learning and unlearning. 1 See ‘Co-sensing with Radical Tenderness’, in Machado de Oliveira Andreotti. 2021a 2 See ‘Crossing Borders’ in 2 Depth Education “Depth Education and the Possibility of GCE Otherwise, 2021b. Source: Andreotti, V. 2021a & 2021b., Atif, A. (2025)., Bourn, D. 2021., Bryan. A. and Mochizuki,Y., 2024., Giroux, H.A. 2025., Meade, E. 2025. Whilst engaging in the concept and act of hope more critically reflect upon: What kinds of education for hope might you explore further and why? How might you provide generative spaces for engaging in diverse worldviews and perspectives? In what ways can you facilitate individual and collective agency? How might you support learners’ practice grounding in the present in order to relate differently? In what ways can you support learners in navigating complex root causes and lived realities of local and global issues? As Chief Ninawa Hini Kui affirms, ‘The future depends much less on the images we project ahead than on our capacity to repair relations and build relationships differently in the present.’ (Andreotti et al, 2023: 73. An invitation for further reading: Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future . d’Abreu, C., Belgeonne, C., Bourn, D. and Hatley, J. (2025) ‘Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future’. DERC Research Paper 24. London: UCL Institute of Education. Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism. Machado de Oliveira Andreotti, V. (2021a) ‘Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism’ , London: Penguin Random House. Development Education and Hope . McCloskey, S. (2025). (ed) ‘Development Education and Hope’. ‘Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review’ , Vol. 41, Autumn. Centre for Global Education, Belfast. Link to and download the full reference list here
This summed up to me about why I volunteer for the Hands Up Project. HUP is a charity trust which, through its network of volunteers, connects children around the world with young people in Palestine. By means of online interaction, drama and storytelling activities, it enables the use of creativity and selfexpression to promote mutual understanding, personal growth, and the development of English language skills. I joined HUP in 2020 during COVID. After going to Palestine in 2017, I wanted to get more involved in working with Palestinian children in schools. HUP gave me the opportunity to link up with schools in the West Bank and Gaza. Every week I’d tell them stories from all over the world, then we’d discuss it, play games and I’d get them to retell it. Sometimes we would work from their coursebook English for Palestine’ in mutual team teaching sessions with their teacher. The simple act of telling a story became much more than entertainment. It became connection, healing, and a bridge to the world beyond their immediate reality to help them improve their language skills, and to give them a platform to speak about their lives in a language that connects them to people everywhere. I loved it, every week, seeing their smiling faces on the screen and building long lasting friendships with their teachers. I even went to Gaza in 2023 and met some of the kids I’d only seen on Zoom. It was a beautiful experience and something I will never forget. As hostilities escalated, I lost contact with everyone. I thought about where the kids were and what had happened to them. As I watched schools being bombed, universities flattened, and people killed in their thousands, I thought about where the kids I’d met were and what was happening to them. I kept in contact with many of the teachers I knew and heard daily news of displacement, destruction, hunger and bombing. Recently, I’ve started to link up again with children in Gaza, and it feels wonderful to be back helping them learn after being denied an education for over two years. Connecting with children in Palestine is more than just words. When a child in Palestine confidently tells their story to someone on the other side of the world, bridges are built, empathy grows, and the world gains a fuller picture of childhood in contexts far from peace and privilege. My work with these children is rooted in the belief that education and voice are inseparable. Through storytelling and English language learning, I witness children not just learning new vocabulary, but reclaiming their narratives, believing in their potential, and finding human connection in a world they perceive has abandoned them. And more than anything, this work reminds us all that children — everywhere — deserve to learn, to speak, and to be heard. Links to HUP information, books and resources: The Hands Up Project BY SUSAN PIPER Susan Piper is currently an ESOL teacher in Oldham, Greater Manchester and has worked in education for over 30 years. She is also a volunteer for the Hands Up Project and is the International Solidarity Officer and President of her NEU district. She believes in quality education for all and aims to make her lessons creative and inclusive so that effective language learning can take place.
