Working in a developing country, one constantly confronts never-thought-of, but very important details necessary to the building of a society. For those of us from a Western context, these are usually things we don’t even think about, because we take them for granted. After all, we didn’t build our society up to its current point, but are building upon the work of people in years past.
Recently, the school has been looking into a rather complex problem in the education system: Handwriting–specifically cursive.
Haiti currently uses a French cursive system with a few alterations. However, curricula are often at variance with each other and with actual practice. There is no real standardized cursive method. This may seem like a small thing, but it actually has significant repercussions, which I cannot detail here.
In addition to this, handwriting is sometimes neglected as a skill. Many a student has failed their State exams, because the officer correcting the papers didn’t even bother to try and decipher their barely-legible, written answers (with good reason–he’s got lots and lots and lots of handwritten exams to go!)
After hours of research, Judy got together with the school administration and teachers to discuss the challenges and work towards adopting an effective standard of handwriting at Lemuel’s school. This will include choosing which cursive system to follow–American? French? Both have their problems in a Haiti context.–or maybe even developing our own font!
On the left-American Cursive; on the right-French Cursvie
The school will be taking time to consider the pro’s and con’s of each style, and everyone will have a chanceto voice their opinion as to which they would choose.
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