Turning Rubble into Resistance: Education in Haiti

In Haiti, the question of education is not about progress. Rather, it’s about endurance. The story of schooling here unfolds between disaster and determination, between classrooms rebuilt and classrooms remembered. Fifteen years after the catastrophic 2010 earthquake, education in Haiti still stands precariously on fractured ground.

When the quake struck near Port-au-Prince, it tore through the country’s fragile infrastructure. Thousands of schools collapsed, destroying more than buildings. It dismantled the routines that give children a sense of stability. Even today, after multiple quakes, hurricanes, and political upheavals, classrooms remain temporary, roofs leak during the rainy season, and many teachers go unpaid for months. The 2021 earthquake in the southwest again damaged the majority of local schools, forcing tens of thousands of students out of class.

But the earthquake merely revealed what poverty had long constructed. Even before 2010, barely half of Haitian children were enrolled in school, and fewer than one in three finished primary education. For most families, the problem was not a lack of will but a lack of means. Although Haiti technically guarantees free and compulsory primary education, over ninety percent of its schools are privately operated, and tuition often consumes much of a family’s income. In rural areas, parents must also pay for uniforms, books, transportation, and meals: expenses that make schooling a luxury.

This inequitable structure leaves public education underfunded and vulnerable to crisis. When disasters strike, private schools close first, teachers scatter, and students vanish from the system. Without consistent oversight, the quality of instruction varies wildly. Children learn in overcrowded rooms, without electricity, internet, or basic sanitation. For many, the school day ends when daylight does.

And yet, even within these limits, education in Haiti endures as an act of resistance. Teachers continue to show up despite delayed salaries; students carry their notebooks through flooded streets. The persistence of learning here is both ordinary and radical, an insistence that knowledge still matters in a nation repeatedly forced to start over.

Education in Haiti is not a story of hope tied neatly with progress. It is a struggle against exhaustion, against the tendency of the world to move on. Every reopened classroom, every lesson taught by candlelight, is a declaration that collapse will not have the final word.

Haiti’s resilience does not ask for sympathy. It demands recognition. Even amid ruin, the pursuit of knowledge continues. In the language of its students and teachers, education is no longer a promise deferred; it is a quiet defiance that refuses to end.