Needing Permission

//Needing Permission//**>>Needing Permission<<**
  
I want to try to connect a couple of experiences in Haiti that might seem 
unrelated. I’m not sure whether the connection quite works. I might be 
stretching. But they are each related to one rather awkward way that I’ve 
occasionally tried to express my hope for the educational programs I work with 
in Haiti. I’ve said that educational programs should help their 
participants overcome habitual passivity. That’s a mouthful, and a pretty 
clumsy one. But a couple of examples might make it clear.
  
Case One: I wrote recently about Vunet, Jidit’s nephew, a 17-year-old 
who’s just come to Pòtoprens to try to pass the sixth grade and 
thus, perhaps, to finish school. His aunt has been preparing him for the 
beginning of school for a couple of weeks: getting the books, ordering a 
uniform, paying his registration and first term’s tuition. He’s 
been doing his share as well, studying his schoolbooks whenever he can. 
We’ve spent some time together doing some basic math.
  
He seems bright to me. He picks up new things quickly. I don’t think, for 
example, that he had ever seen decimals before, but within a few minutes he was 
handling them easily. 
  
We were practicing long division. He was a little unsure of himself. At a 
certain point, he needed to know how many times eleven goes into sixteen. So he 
tried nine. He calculated 9 x 11, and discovered the answer was too large. Then 
he tried eight times, then seven, then six. He finally tried one, writing out 
11 x 1, and calculating the answer. 
  
I was dumbfounded. Vunet got the right answer.  It’s not as though he 
couldn’t figure things out. But his extraordinary dependence on an 
ingrained process rather than on intuition would have been comical if it 
hadn’t been so real, so limiting. I want to say something like that Vunet 
felt he lacked permission to look the problem in front of him straight in the 
face. It was as though letting his real intelligence work for him was not an 
option. He had learned to follow the rules that had been set out for him and 
follow them without reflection.
  
Case Two: It was only natural that the workshop should begin with 
introductions. Each participant was to respond to series of questions: name, 
hometown, and a couple of questions about their experience with Fonkoze. The 
questions were projected on the wall of the room we were meeting in. I should 
add that, uncharacteristically for groups of adults in Haiti, all participants 
were literate.
  
But though they could read, they wouldn’t answer the questions. 
  
Let’s be clear. It’s not as though they refused. No one was taking, 
as we say in the States, “the fifth.” But each would wait for me to 
ask every question before she would respond. None would simply make her 
introductory speech without my close guidance. They each wanted step-by-step 
instructions, though they each heard those same instructions as I gave them to 
the women before her. 
  
I was trying to juggle a number of priorities – making sure that the 
workshop leader, for whom I was translating, would get what he was asking for, 
ensuring that the introductions would not eat much too much of a packed 
schedule – so, rather than asking the women why they so patiently and 
unnecessarily waited for me to explicitly invite them to speak, I simply 
repeated the questions one after another. It all went smoothly enough, but it 
was frustrating to watch the women’s dependence on my cues.
  
Case Three: One of my most consistent experiences when I visit groups of 
Fonkoze borrowers – mostly poor rural women – is that my questions 
are greeted with silence. If I put a question to a group, it is likely that no 
member of the group will answer right away. 
  
If I’m traveling with another member of the Fonkoze staff, they are 
likely to repeat my question right away, insisting that the women answer. 
Though I speak Creole with the women, it is as though the staff members think 
that they need to translate my Creole into Creole again. 
  
I think I understand why they do what they do. First, though my Creole is 
improving, it is not as though I speak it like a Haitian. They may genuinely 
believe that rural women could have a hard time understanding me if they are 
unaccustomed to the way I speak. And I must admit that there’s something 
to that. Second, they are used to the women’s reluctance to talk in a 
group setting, and they want to encourage them, even push them, to speak up. 
Third, they have lots of work to do, and can feel pressed for time. They 
don’t believe they have the leisure to wait.
  
So they hurry things up, thus guaranteeing that none of the women need to show 
the assertiveness it would take to answer my questions directly. Or even just 
to say that they don’t understand what I’ve said.
  
What we teach is less important than how we teach, because the knowledge and 
skills that we acquire are less important than the habits that make us what we 
are. 
  
Classrooms alone have not made Vunet what he is. Much less are they the force 
that has shaped the clients of Fonkoze, many of whom haven’t been to 
school. But they do offer an opportunity. If we design classes – whether 
they are one-on-one tutoring sessions or larger classrooms – that 
encourage, even require, initiative, then we can help those whom we work with 
overcome the passivity they are so used to. And overcoming passivity is 
equivalent to setting and pursuing one’s own goals. 
  
Haiti will not change until the Haitians who need change are constructing a 
vision of the Haiti they want, expressing that vision, and insisting upon it. 
The habit of passivity is a barrier on all three counts. Helping overcome that 
habit thus supports change in the most fundamental way.