Needless to say that if primary and secondary education was similarly privatized in the industrialized world we would experience higher illiteracy rates.
Access to education and quality education in a sovereign nation are the result of political and fiscal policy.
Most nations rich in natural resources are economically poor with weak financial markets and are not sovereign but under the pressures of foreign policies sometimes rooted in colonial times or postcolonial institutions.
The NPO world or the privatized business model will never successfully substitute the responsibility of a government to provide access to education. This right is found in all the constitutions. Access to quality education is to be understood as a socio economic equalizer, children need to start a self empowering journey regardless of the parents’ circumstances.
Geopolitical conflicts, political ideology, financial interests, and foreign policies are not investing in education. All the NGO research papers on resolving “access” have focused on an hybrid solution that would maintain the existing private sector by providing government subsidies.
Access to quality universal education must become a reality regardless of the rich nations interest in maintaining a degree of influence that prevents sovereignty.
Haiti has a monopolized publishing market. The publisher has the copyrights. They would need to digitalize their content. Establishing new content would need to be compliant with the Haitian curriculum and receive the ministry of education approval. Alternatives to the two options above would be illegal. Our recipients do not have access to energy. Any laptop, tablet, kindle would become a security issue considering that would be the most expensive object in the household. The school do not have energy. If we were able to sponsor a $1799 solar solution we would start to implement computer literacy and a computer lab. We are investing on the production of e-content for an ICT strategy for teachers continuing education. Teachers would need to be trained first about utilizing PCs, the new didactic material and related pedagogy. There are multiple aspects to the e-learning solution: customized computer literacy, appropriate e-learning content in french and creole, energy availability, internet access and security. We are implementing some steps but we don’t have sufficient money.
We are changing the course of destiny for 220 children but I remain of the opinion that unless we change our ways, here in our economies, kindle, ipad and knowledge are not going to change the rate by which new poverty is formed. We can use many examples on how regardless of access to technology and access to quality content we can find widening and polarized serious poverty across the street, this indicates to me that our economic models are unsuccessful because culturally and spiritually we have not kept pace with our intellect.
The degree by which tribal sentiments are fueling privileged relationships and arbitrarily distributing resources is the underpinned reality that we have not overcome.
Education as a journey of self discovery travels slower than keystroke of commodity traders and manipulators defrauding humanity.