Living through fire

The violence in Haiti provides an impetus for pupils to explore the problems faced by the world's first black republic. By Jerome Monahan

News images from Haiti have been grim: looters, wrecked shops, burning barricades and marauding gunmen. The accompanying reports talk of reprisal killings of supporters of the former president Jean-Baptiste Aristide (who has fled to Africa), and of the possible return to power of men with poor human rights records.

Haiti may be the latest example of a poor country spiralling out of control, yet this time civil war and slaughter may have been prevented by prompt United Nations intervention. The story provides an opportunity in school to assess the role of the UN and also for children to reflect on what it must be like to live in one of the world's poorest and most unstable countries.

Putting Haiti on the map

Help students get a fix on where Haiti is. Point out Haiti's curious geography, occupying the western third of the former Spanish island of Hispaniola. Ask them to describe what they assume life is like on a tropical island. Some students may have first-hand experience of the Caribbean. It will also be a way of assessing representations of this part of the world in advertising.

Discuss the news coverage of the Haiti crisis. Have students heard of the country before? Why do they think it is now occupying such attention? This will broaden the discussion by raising the issue of what is considered newsworthy in the UK press. Generally, coverage of the Caribbean, Latin and South America has been limited recently, with all eyes focused on Iraq and the Middle East.

Haiti's current troubles have been gathering steadily since elections in 2000 saw Aristide take the presidency for a second time with 92% of the vote. Ask your students to investigate the background to the present crisis and show it as a timeline, illustrated, perhaps, with headlines derived from an archive search on the Guardian website (www.guardian.co.uk).

What is poverty?

Haiti is no sun-kissed idyll, 80% of the population endure poverty, malnutrition and disease. To get a measure of the difficulties people face there, it is worth discussing what students think of as necessities in their own lives, contrasting this with the living conditions endured by ordinary Haitians.

Visit the CIA world fact site (www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/). Switching from data concerning the UK to that describing Haiti will help pupils draw stark conclusions about what it is like to live there. For example, Haiti is highly over-populated, with approximately 8.3m people crammed into only 27,750 square kilometres.

Average earnings are just over £1.50 a day and life expectancy at birth is just 49 years for men and 51 years for women. Compare these with the equivalent figures for the UK population (75.8 and 80.5 respectively). Nearly 50% of the population are unable to read. What problems might that pose for Haiti's development prospects?

The country's dominant belief in voodoo is also blamed by some for encouraging a highly fatalistic view of the world in which all actions and events are determined by the pantheon of Iwa spirits. This is contested. Poverty, others say, is far more of a hurdle. Either way, voodoo is an intriguing subject for a comparative religious study.

A tough environment?

Invite students to investigate what problems Haiti's climate and geography present. For example, the north-west spur suffers from poor rainfall and often from drought. But Haiti is also in the middle of the main hurricane route, so flooding is a potential problem in the storm season from June to October.

A lack of regular fresh water brings health risks and many people are malnourished, surviving on only 75% of the minimum required daily calorie intake. The steady environmental destruction adds to the problems. Haiti was once thickly forested - now the hillsides are mostly bare, stripped of their wood by people in need of fuel. Soil erosion is considerable.

Ask students to create a poster showing the troubles that face an average Haitian. Illustrate it with images from newspapers or the internet.

Injustice and democracy

Haiti offers further opportunities to reflect on the stability and safety most of us take for granted. It is a country that has endured decades of dictatorship under the Duvaliers, frequent military coups and seemingly endless violence. The richest 1% of the population own half the country's wealth.

President Aristide was the first Haitian leader elected in a fair vote, and 10 years ago the Americans sent 20,000 troops to restore him to power following a military coup in 1991. Before his departure this time, it looked as though Haiti faced civil war, but the UN's security council voted unanimously to send a peacekeeping force.

Get students to visit the UN online (www.un.org) and investigate its role in the world. Invite students to keep an eye on Haiti. How will Haitians' attitude to the peacekeepers change in the months and years to come?

Curriculum links and guidance

This lesson is written for KS3 (age 11-14) but can be adapted for other ages

Key stage 2 (age 7-11)

Haiti has had a rich, though bloody history. Exploring its past with students will link Columbus, the extermination of the native Arawak people, rivalries of European powers in the Caribbean (mainly France and Spain in Haiti's case), and the development of the slave trade.

Pirates also come into the tale, providing an excuse for an interesting project. The French pirates of la Tortue (an island off Haiti's north coast) were known for their tasty outdoor cooking of wild pig, boukaniers. This word proved beyond English speakers, giving us the word buccaneer.

Haiti was once France's richest colony, the source of a third of its foreign commerce. The example its slave population provided the rest of the world when they revolted, turning Haiti into the first black republic in 1804, is also fascinating.

In Shakespeare's Macbeth, Macduff reports how Scotland " ... sinks beneath the yoke,/It weeps, it bleeds, and each new day a gash/Is added to her wounds." Invite students to write or paint images of what they think constitutes a peaceful country and a country in chaos. There is a good precedent for this on the walls of the Renaissance town hall in Siena, where the fruits of good and bad government are shown in large frescoes.

Key stage 4 (age 14-16)

Use language lessons to explore the Creole language, spoken by 90% of the Haitian population. ActionAid has produced an education pack, "Allons en Haiti", geared to French teachers. It includes sections on Creole. Email deved@actonaid.org.uk for a free copy.

In a pattern that reflects the split that occurred in Saxon England under the Normans, French became the language of the elite while Creole remained the means by which ordinary people communicated. In England's case of course, the people's "Creole" eventually became the origin of modern English.

Haiti provides an interesting way in which to explore certain aspects of international foreign policy. Should other countries intervene when such crises occur? The US has long thought of the Caribbean as part of its own "back yard". Some commentators are critical of the US, blaming it for undermining Haiti and Aristide through its decision to cut aid after the supposedly flawed 2000 elections. Haiti is known to be a major staging post for Colombian drugs on their way to the US - another ingredient in a complex pot.

Curriculum links

Art 1a-c, 5a-d
English (En1) 1a-f, 2a-e, 3a-f; (En2) 1a-d, 2a-d, 5a-g
Geography 1a-e, 2a-g
History A world history study

Citizenship 1c-d, 1f, 1h, 2a-c
English (En1) 1a-g, 2a-f, 3a-e; (En2) 4a-d, 5a-d; (En3) 1a-h
Geography 1a-f, 3a-e, 6h-k
RE QCA scheme of work 7A, 8C
PSHE 2b, 2e

Citizenship 1a, 1g, 2a-c
English (En1) 1a-g, 2a-f, 3a-e, 8 a-c; (En2) 1a-i, 5a-c
Geography Haiti as a study of the problems of developing nations and the support offered by charities

Scottish Curriculum 5-14
Art and design Levels D-F
English Levels D-F
Environmental and social studies Levels D-F


Email a 200-word extension activity to learn@guardian.co.uk by March 19; the best this term will win a Kaleidos package, an RM Tablet PC and a subscription to learnpremium, and appear on EducationGuardian.co.uk


www.guardian.co.uk/worldnews guide/caribbean Guardian guide to the Caribbean
http://web.amnesty.org/library/ Index/ENGAMR360102004 Amnesty International
http://haitisupport.gn.apc.org The Haiti Support Group
www.who.int/country/hti/en World Health Organisation pages on Haiti

Today's best video

Today in pictures

More from Learn lesson plans