Above all, it is important to redefine RE for the purpose of this study. It is my thesis that RE is not complete without the inclusion of all the other religious beliefs. Also, an education or curriculum without RE, is incomplete. As it is the case in Haiti, this does not mean that teachers have an excuse to promote their religious beliefs against other belief system nor to impart knowledge about religion to students to memorize and recite only. What this means, rather, is that religious leaders, educators, curriculum makers, social workers, politicians, and so forth should adapt real situation approach to RE in order to invite students to join thought and action for fostering knowledge of world religion, religious tolerance, and religious dialogue. In Haiti, RE which is inclusive can be helpful in promoting peace and addressing violence and resistance caused by religious intolerance.
The ability for people to get along well with one another in society depends a great deal on the kind of interaction they had with one another during their school experiences. It is of paramount importance that students develop skills in interactional exchanges in order to be successful both in their studies and in life. In order to achieve this, teachers need to provide them with opportunities for meaningful communicative modeling when their classes are made up of learners from difference religious backgrounds.
9 1.2 PROBLEM STATEMENT
As mentioned above, religion creates social problem in Haiti. Religious communities and private operators have gradually become the main providers of education in Haiti because Haiti’s former leaders had never developed a well-functioning system of public schools (Salmi, 2000; Bulder, 2007). Consequently, two-thirds of the private schools are religious schools. In addition, catholic schools were jointly funded by the Haitian government and the Vatican thus these schools became non-secular public schools. Subsequently, RE is taught in many schools in Haiti (Wolff, 2008);
most of these schools are permitted to follow their own programs of RE. Religious schools approach to RE is faith-based thus does not address social problem. These social problems can be put into one term which is lack of a culture of peace.
As noted earlier RE is synonymous to Bible lessons or catechism. For instance, in addition to the secular curriculum which can be Bible-based curriculum, Haitian Christian schools teach Bible truths to pupils and share about God to them. Haiti is a country in which state and religion are not totally separated. This is due to the fact that though Roman Catholicism official status was repealed with the enactment of the 1987 constitution; but Haiti and the Vatican continue to honor the 1860 Concordat relation. It has been a tradition in Haiti to hold a Te Deum1 service for presidential inauguration and significant historical anniversaries.
1The term Te Deum refers to a religious service in which the Te Deum laudamus (Thee, O God, we praise) hymn is sung, it is held to bless an event or give thanks (Henry, 1912). This occurs mainly in traditionally Catholic nations.
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The Haitian government tries to promote religious freedom and allows all religious groups to intervene in political affairs in order to bring peace through religion exempli gratia a committee of religious leaders was established to solve a problem with the most recent former president who was accused of having other nationality but Haitian. This committee was charged with the mission to ensure to collect evidences from different sources in order to check the veracity of this information. The committee carried out its mission the best way possible but ended up fizzling out because the problem was not tackled at the beginning. Whenever a political turmoil surfaces religious leaders are invited as competent people to use their wisdom and reasons to come up with a solution. Despite of their willingness to cooperate, their devotion to help the country out of the situation they always fail in their mission because they have to operate on the short term. Such experiences are living examples which can prove that religion can always be an alternative if used adequately, just to say that if we really want to resort to religion to sort out such important issues we should imperatively review our teaching methods and our way to see things. Thus, tackle such teaching with a reinforce dose of tolerance. Considering the important part religion can play in our daily struggle against the deterioration of the current situation while status quo is still maintained such a question ended up nurturing in me “what can education do?”
Lack of education (precisely a lack of religion literate) is one of the principal cause of religious discrimination and this latter is an obstacle to religious freedom or/and religious toleration in Haiti.
There is possibility to feel the gap: The Haitian population needs to be educated on its own history with link to African animist culture, on history of Roman Catholic with its western and eastern roots as well as its history with Africa, and the history of Protestantism with link from Germany, France, England, United States, to Haiti. RE is said to contribute to peace, tolerance, and human
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right. Stemmed from this problem, Haiti is an appropriate case study in which to explore Haitian views on RE.