From Amherst to Ayiti: Language, Becoming, and the Work of Building a Nation's Next Leadership

Content

The Department of Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies and the Language, Literacy, and Culture program welcome Dr. Marky Jean-Pierre '10PhD back to UMass Amherst for a special presentation regarding education in Haiti.

First, drawing on critical social theory, he will give a brief overview of the history of education in Haiti across nearly two centuries of Haitian constitutions, from 1805 to 1987. He will discuss how the world's first Black republic has not yet freed itself from its colonial past, due in part to the language policies shaping teaching and learning.

Building on Freire's account of humanization through dialogue, Bakhtin's notion of dialogism, and Hegel's and Heidegger's conceptions of the self as perpetually in the process of becoming, Jean-Pierre will make a case for why Haitian Creole should be the language of instruction and policymaking in Haiti (e.g., Jean-Pierre, 2016, 2019, 2021).

Second, he will describe the development of a school he founded. The school provides curricular materials and professional development that enable teachers and students to use Haitian Creole for academic purposes and to resist the further reinscription of inequitable colonial identities. The school is funded by RIVE, a nonprofit he founded while at UMass. To date, the school has provided free education to 350 students and professional development to their teachers. The goal of this growing educational facility is to prepare the next generation of Haitian leaders to use Haitian Creole agentively, developing it as a language of the humanities, the sciences, and the law for social, economic, and political advancement.

Third, Jean-Pierre will take questions about his approach to using critical theory to enact school change in practice.

About the speaker

Dr. Marky Jean-Pierre is a professor of French and Haitian Creole studies at the University of The Bahamas. He holds a doctorate in education from the University of Massachusetts Amherst (2010) and a doctorate in French studies from the University of Connecticut (2015). His research explores language, education, and social change in postcolonial societies, especially Haiti. He is a founding member of the Haitian Creole Academy (Akademi Kreyòl Ayisyen), where he heads the Scientific Committee, and he was elected to its 2025–2026 Board of Administration. He is also the founder and director of RIVE, a nonprofit that supports a school in Haiti. He is the author of numerous publications, including Language and Learning in a Post-Colonial Context: A Critical Ethnographic Study in Schools in Haiti (Routledge).