Chapo Ba…in which we pay tribute to someone who has made a significant impact on Haitian culture.
Jacqueline Turian Cardozo is so associated with the children’s literacy book Ti Malice au pays des lettres, that many aren’t even aware that she’s written several other books mainly Le petit marchand de fanaux: conte de Noël and her autobiography On ne guérit pas de son enfance, published in 1987.
Some observers have noted that it isn’t that prior to the publication of her book Ti Malice au Pays des Lettres (Ti Malice in the Land of Letters), that there weren’t any books available in Haiti to teach literacy to young children. The groundbreaking aspect of Turian Cardozo’s work lay in the fact that she created a literacy book, that was made with Haitian students in mind. No more Luc and Michel-Marcel of Lyons, but Ti Malice of Haiti. Turian also developed a phonetics system that made it easier for little Haitian children to learn how to read and write. Her methods are reportedly still being used in Haiti.
Turian was born in 1929 (some sources state 1924, but Turian Cardozo maintains this date) to Fernand Raphaël Turian, a Gonaives-born Swiss-Haitian and Maud Hudicourt Turian (later Desvarieux), a Haitian educator. Born in Port-au-Prince, Turian spent her early years in Gonaives where her father had a business in the downtown area of that city. Mr. Turian died while his daughter was still a little girl, following a devastating hurricane. Maud Hudicourt Turian was obliged to closed down the private school she ran in Gonaives, and return to Port-au-Prince to join her parents (Mrs. Turian’s grandfather Lélio Hudicourt, was a prominent doctor in Port-au-Prince, and her grandmother Madame Hudicourt was a high society matron).
The young Miss Turian grew up in the midst of Haitian intelligentsia (Dantès Bellegarde assisted her piano recitals and Dr. Brun Ricot, a renowned doctor in Haiti in the 1930s and 1940s was a neighbor; Dr. Jean Price-Mars, Haiti’s foremost anthropologist would later enroll his granddaughter in her school).
Miss Turian married Lloyd Cardozo and together they had two boys Jean-Richard, Patrick and a girl Raphaëlle. The educator traveled extensively and from what she garnered from visiting the world’s other educational communities, she formulated techniques of her own, and opened Kindergarten Jacqueline Turian Cardozo, a school that was to achieve a great deal of prestige in Haiti, due to the caliber of its instructors, the quality of Turian Cardozo’s methods and their effectiveness.
Over the years, Turian Cardozo’s groundbreaking book Ti Malice au pays des lettres has had several editions (the first appeared in 1965), and many spin-offs. Highly influenced by Montessouri methods (the title was inspired by a French book she had been given by her socialist uncle Max Hudicourt called Didine Au Pays des Mots–Didine in the Land of Letters), Turian cardozo’s contribution to preschool and kindergarten education in Haiti are vast.
The influence of her mother Maud Hudicourt—a founding member of Haiti’s feminist collective Ligue Féminine d’Action Social—on the life and work of Jacqueline Turian Cardozo cannot be denied. After working in schools in Jérémie, Hudicourt founded her own school in 1931 in Haiti called Ecole Nouvelle, hiring distinguished staff such as the Haitian choreographer Lina Mathon-Blanchet as a dance instructor, and Anette Merceron, as a gymnastics teacher. At one point, Hudicourt Desvarieux also served as president of an educator’s association in Haiti.
Regardless of her mother’s influence, however, it is apparent that Turian Cardozo had education in her blood.
Today, a street in Haiti (in Port-au-Prince), once known as Impasse Lavaud (and where she housed one of her institutions) was renamed Rue Jacqueline Turian Cardozo—in her honor. Her children’s literacy book is also used to teach adult learners how to read. Jacqueline Turian Cardozo, who could trace her ancestors back to Caroline Dupuy, a descendant of Baron Alexis Dupuy, one of the original signers of the original Haitian Act of Independence, was a proud Haitian, and one who was responsible for the early education of Haiti’s brightest.
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