1923–1929: (Children’s Crusade: The Service Technique as School System, the Creole-French Barrier, Bellegarde’s National Redoubt, and the Himalayan Barriers …

1923–1929: (Children’s Crusade: The Service Technique as School System, the Creole-French Barrier, Bellegarde’s National Redoubt, and the Himalayan Barriers to Education): The Service Technique was no mere agricultural extension program — it was in fact an attempt to make good what Rayford Logan called an almost inexplicable omission in the original treaties: the failure to include education in the ambit of the occupation. In 1915, Haiti already had two school systems: the network of graft-engulfed government schools, enrollment about 30,000, preponderantly nonexistent except on paper, manned if at all by illiterate spoilsmen; and the flourishing mainly Catholic religious schools of roughly 12,000 students, exclusive preserve of the elite except for about a hundred presbyterial schools in which back-country Breton priests imparted rudimentary smatterings to a few thousand peasant children. Education in Haiti had inherited and still has unique problems: the peasants were apathetic, the elite rightly feared uncontrollable social consequences resulting from enlightenment of noir masses — in the 1920s they also feared those masses might bestow greater loyalty on blan who were demonstrably bettering their lives than on Haitian masters who exploited them. The almost insoluble Creole-French language barrier was another obstacle: teachers, clawing their way upward, persisted in using French, language of social cachet, rather than Creole, understandable to noir pupils. Behind these Himalayan barriers lay still one more: clutching at any shred of power not monopolized by the occupation, Haitian politicians headed by Dantès Bellegarde rallied to education as a national redoubt against further foreign encroachment. The Americans saw Haitian education as hopelessly misdirected, preparing elite children for white-collar jobs that did not exist, turning out swarms of lawyers and votaries of belles lettres while shunning vocational practicalities — thoughtful Haitians had long accepted these perceptions, as Joseph Justin had written in 1915 that as for the commonplace trades and manual arts, they held them in holy horror, they were beneath them, and the school system was not only defective but constituted a real social danger. How insoluble the problem really was might be questioned: keeping Haitian peasants ignorant supported the interests, conformed to the natural inclinations, and quieted the insecurities of the elite. Regardless of how correctly the Americans perceived the situation, their solution was foredoomed — to head the Service Technique, Dr. George F. Freeman was a poor pick, regarded by British Minister Magowan as of doubtful competence, with personnel made up to a great extent of men and women who neither spoke a word of French nor had any special qualifications as experts, but who had been dumped upon the unfortunate Haitian budget at unnecessarily high salaries.