Why the Kids are skipping school

Today was one of the first days school was back in session. For the past three weeks or so the school has partially been in session because the students have been taking state exams. These exams take the place of all other school activities, so there is no class or after school activities in the three week period that these exams are administered. Today was the first day back, and the school was busier than it has been in the past few weeks. I had to go to the market today to buy a cow and a few goats, and as I was leaving the mission I saw all of the kids coming into school. The road leading up the school was packed with kids. The only other place with more kids on it was the road that went through the market.

When I was at the market today I saw so many kids working there. Most of the time when I think of children working, I think of children I saw begging in Africa, but most of these kids are doing something productive. There were kids carrying stuff, hawking goods, and doing most of the same tasks their parents were doing. The kids range in age, but the youngest seem to be around eleven or twelve. Every city I’ve bee to around La Croix is always packed with kids, all of whom are working. Every kid I see working in the market is a kid who is not going to school. They might be playing hooky, but the majority of the kids at the market are not playing hooky, they are there to help their parents sell their produce. These kids aren’t enrolled in school. At first this really bothered me, think about how much future potential Haiti was losing with these kids not learning? There was so much human capital being squandered, no wonder the whole country was so poor. As I’ve read more on Haiti and developing economies and worked more with the Haitians here, I’m beginning to understand that these kids in the market is not as bad as I initially thought.

In the US no one questions the benefits of education. The more education someone has, the better off he or she will be (on average). Generally speaking, the more education a person has, the more competitive he or she is in the job market. Not only is a “better” job one with a higher salary, but people with more education can generally secure jobs with better benefits, better working conditions, and better hours. Being a “competitive” job applicant in the US job market means having desirable skills for a certain job, specifically skills for a “changing economy”. The “changing economy” skills aren’t so much skills that can be demonstrated on a resume, but rather are skills that allow a person to adapt to new challenges. Skills for a “changing economy” imply that the candidate will be able to adjust to the new challenges presented in the future. This is a reasonable skill for any firm to look for because the US economy is constantly changing. Every month there are millions of new jobs created, and millions of old jobs created (when the job report says “150,000 new jobs added to the economy”, this is a net gain of jobs added not the total number of jobs added. Most months will have something like 3.5 million jobs lost and 3.65 jobs created, netting out 150,000 new jobs added to the economy). Even though our economy has been slumping since 2007, it has still been extremely dynamic as a whole. This dynamism means that any productive person has to have an education that allows them to adapt to the creative destruction in the US economy.

The Haitian economy is completely different than the US economy on this level. Haiti is one of the few countries in the world whose overall output was greater in 1960 than in 2010. In other words, despite the great leaps in technology and the rapid economic advancement around the world, Haiti produced more stuff in 1960 than in 2010. Haiti doesn’t add millions of new jobs and destroy millions of old jobs every month. Most of the jobs in Haiti are subsistence farming, and education has a limited affect on a farmer’s output. Even if someone has a college education, they might never find a job better than subsistence farming. In the US, where we are adding millions of new jobs every month, the more education a person has, the more likely that person is to land one of those exciting new jobs that was just created. This is just not the case in Haiti. There are no new and exciting jobs being created. Why get an education at all if, no matter what type of education you have, the only way you can make money is by farming your small plot of land?

I am not trying to advocate that more children should drop out of school. I came here to help build a school; I want more students to be in school. I am trying to explain that the reality of education in Haiti. For some kids they can study hard, go to university, and get a good job. For some kids, they can take advantage of new markets opening up. This is part of the reason Pastor Pierre wants to build the vocational school I am working on currently. There have been a huge investments made in the development of Haiti’s physical infrastructure, so are a bunch of new jobs opening up for anyone with technical knowledge. Thus anyone with enough technical education in the trades can make a very good living. Though the infrastructure sector is doing very well, it is one of many secotrs that make up the Haitian economy. The rest of the Haitian economy is creating very few new jobs or might actually be shrinking and losing jobs.

When I went to college I (really my parents) had to pay two costs. One cost was the cost of tuition, room and board, books and all of the explicit costs associated with going to college. The other cost I had to bear was the time I spent and the money I could have spent that time either going to college or working. I decided to spend four years making essentially zero dollars and investing into my future. I could have spent those four years working and making around $25,000-$30,000 a year. I decided to give up that income because going to college would give me the skills that would eventually land me a job that would pay much more than $25,000-$30,000 a year. This is not the case in Haiti. A twelve year old child could stay in school from age twelve to eighteen, and even if he or she didn’t have to pay any tuition, he or she would sacrifice the money he or she could have been making by working with his or her parents in the fields. If the economy is stagnant, if there are no new jobs open for that kid once he or she finishes school, then why should they stay in school? If a kid is going to make two dollars a day no matter how much education he or she has, then they have no incentive to stay in school, but they have a great incentive to drop out of school and start working. 

Education is a very complicated part of an economy. It is necessary for any growth and development to take place, but if the economy isn’t growing, if an economy isn’t creating any new jobs, then more education isn’t going to help anything. In order for more kids to go to school, they need to have incentive to go to school. They need to have an incentive to invest their time in their education rather than making a living. There are a few parts of the Haitian economy that have these incentives, like the trades, but there are many parts of the Haitian economy that aren’t creating any jobs and aren’t giving kids an incentive to go to school. Rather than being the sole cause keeping Haiti in poverty, kids working in the market and not in school are one of the results of the failing economy.