Birth of Yves Dejean, the linguist who fought for Kreyol in school

Yves Dejean was born in Port-au-Prince on 16 May 1927. He studied philosophy and theology first, then took a doctorate in linguistics at Indiana University in 1977. His argument never changed: a child cannot learn in a language he does not speak. He wrote Comment ecrire le creole d’Haiti, An n aprann otograf kreyol la, and Yon lekol tet anba nan yon peyi tet anba, a school upside down in a country upside down. He helped found the state literacy secretariat in 1994 and sat on the committee that created the Akademi Kreyol Ayisyen in 2012. He died 29 March 2018.