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Mauritians on the Move, American Style

Mgr. Maurice Piat describes a "long way to go" toward improving education in Mauritius

One of the biggest challenges facing education in Mauritius is breaking the cycle of failure, Mgr. Maurice Piat told a gathering of Mauritians living in Washington, D.C. last week.

"Year in and year out, 40 percent of Mauritian children fail their CPE - the end of primary education exam," the priest said during a two-day stopover in the nation's capital. "Most of them are illiterate. We have a colonial system based on the Cambridge exams. But only 21 percent get their HSC (Higher School Certificate). And those that do, adapt very well around the world, in universities in Europe, the United States, Australia, England and South Africa. But the others are left behind."

Bishop Piat said these failures are of great concern and consequence to the national economy because 70 percent of jobs in the emerging economic sectors - IT, financial services, call centers, business outsourcing, tourism, textiles - demand the HSC as a condition of employment.

The Catholic Church, which runs 20 percent of the primary schools and 10 percent of the secondary schools in Mauritius, doesn't have the complete solution, but is advancing some ideas to address the problem.

"To reduce the high failure rate, we must start with the mother tongue and for 80 percent of the people in Mauritius that is Creole, and then move on toe England and French," he said.

The Bishop suggests that the language of instruction for at least the first two years of primary school should be Creole, not English, because Creole is the language spoken at home and is the language in which most children are most comfortable when they start school.

Right now, he said, students are introduced to too many languages at a young age, being required to write in French and English, while they speak Creole at home. "They get very confused and fed up, and as a result, they become proficient actors (pretending they know all those languages) but they aren't educated," he said.

"We should push to use Creole as a standard way of writing, and teach them in their language so that they can build confidence, and then teach another language.

The Bishop is currently in the United States and Canada for three weeks, meeting with Mauritians who have settled in these countries. The Mauritian communities in several Canadian cities and Washington, D.C., have been actively fundraising for more than five years to finance the repairs and upgrades of several disadvantaged Catholic-run schools in Mauritius. The fundraising is done through a charitable group called Trait d'Union.

Mgr. Piat's Washington D.C. stay was organized by Suzanne Kon Kim Kong, who works at the World Bank and is president of Trait d'Union USA. (www.traitdunionusamauritius.org) She asked Bishop Piat to speak to her group about the current state of education in Mauritius, and to suggest ways that Mauritians living overseas can help school children in Mauritius.

"We very grateful" for the money raised for Catholic schools so far, he told the group. "But the road is still long."

He said funds are needed to pay for continuous teacher training. This training would go beyond mastering the academic material being taught, but also include a holistic approach to education by possessing an understanding of the social and personal development of a child. The Australian Catholic University has been working with the Catholic schools in Mauritius on improving instruction in this and other areas.

But he said like any kind of change, there is resistance. Many teachers are wary of new approaches to teaching, especially when he suggests having classes with students of mixed educational abilities - strong, average and slow. "The teachers don't like me," he said with a laugh.

"We started lots of projects with close collaboration of the Ministry of Education," he explained. "But we need money to give our school buildings a minimum of decency and to give formation to our teachers."

While in Washington, Mgr. Piat also met with leaders of the Catholic Church in the Washington area, and offered Mass at a Washington church.

Maryland meets Mauritius

Banana chips, tea, toy Dodo birds, rum, jams and moolkoo were among the many products from Mauritius on display at an international trade fair held in Maryland on Oct. 4.

Sponsored by Maryland's Trade Center, based in Baltimore, the 19th Annual Embassy Day brought representatives from 50 nations and several hundred Maryland-based businesses together for a day of promotion and networking. The goal was to introduce the State of Maryland, which has a large international port and is just outside Washington, DC, as a friendly place for international business and investment, and to give the chance to foreign countries to promote their products and industries.

The Mauritius Embassy joined many other nations in setting up a booth in the large exhibit area. The booth featured many of Mauritius' traditional products, such as sugar, textiles, tea and rum. Many of the samples were provided by Mauritius Duty Free.

But it also featured several emerging industries, such as the leather goods sector which is trying to increase its duty-free, quota-free exports to the United States under the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).

A leather handbag and necklace created by Hemisphere Sud, Plaine Lauzan, attracted a lot of attention from conference attendees, who remarked at the bag's beauty and uniqueness. Several people suggested that the bag could be easily sold in specialty clothing boutiques in Maryland.

Participating in the exhibit gave the Mauritius Embassy yet another chance to promote the country and its exports.

"You have to seize every opportunity to let people in the United States know that there is a country like Mauritius that is trying to create a niche for itself in the global market," said Kailash Ruhee, Mauritius ambassador to the United States. "The networking here is amazing."

He said that many visitors to the booth were unaware that Mauritius could make leather goods to such a high standard or that it produces tropical fruit pastes, or that the island was a potential location for outsourcing of legal and other business services.

Meanwhile, a delegation from the Mauritius Bureau of Investment was in Canada and the United States last week seeking potential U.S. and Canadian investors. In New York, they targeted financial companies and in San Francisco, information technology (IT) firms.

Madan Dulloo, Minister of Foreign Affairs, was also in the United States recently to meet with U.S. officials in Washington on trade and investment matters. The minister also traveled to El Salvador for the second International Conference on Development Cooperation with Middle-Income Countries.

Dulloo's message to the conference was that small, middle-income countries, especially islands, are vulnerable to sudden shocks like weather disasters and shouldn't be overlooked by international donor organizations just because they are no longer poor. These countries still need support from multilateral organizations to keep their economies and governments strong, according to Vinod Busjeet, trade commissioner at the embassy, who accompanied Dulloo on the trip.

a m e r i c a n   s c e n e

WEEK-END --- dimanche 21 octobre 2007