of national development. By virtue of the laws promulgated on August 8, 1947 and November 11, 1949, respectively, the government of the Republic proceeded to reorganise the Department (Ministry) of National Education by creating the positions of Director General and Deputy Director General, following the powers assigned to an Under Secretary of State for National Education under the law of November 23, 1946. The salaries of teachers and professors were adjusted according to the cost of living. The minimum salary of a teacher, 70 gourdes per month in October 1946, was raised to 100 gourdes in January 1947, reaching the sum of 140 gourdes in October 1947 and 200 gourdes in October 1948. The aim was to make rural education an attractive career for teachers who were trained and capable of handling the problems of rural life. Under the law of September 29, 1946 the government of the Republic levied 10% of municipal revenue for the construction of public schools. Between February 1947 and May 1949, 23 public schools were built by order of the Head of State, while development and expansion works were carried out on school buildings in the capital and the province. In October 1946 there were only 623 teachers for 362 rural schools. By May 1949, the number of teachers assigned to rural education had reached 823, an increase of 34% which clearly reflected ‘the special attention to proletarian and peasant youth’ according to the outline of the presidential speech of August 16, 1946. During this same period, more than forty schools and farm schools had been built in rural areas, allowing several thousand Haitians to benefit from education and therefore shape the goals of the president’s education policy for children in need. In the same vein, secondary education was not neglected, as proved by the founding of the Lycee Toussaint Louverture in the Morne-à-Tuff area in the capital and the opening of a high school in Hinche and the Faustin Soulouque high school in Petit-Goâve, in accordance with the laws of September 9 and 30, 1946. The high schools of the capital, Cayes and Cap-Haitien, were also renovated. In 1947, the executive passed the law of July 24, authorising the creation of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, a public utility institution dedicated to the intellectual training of secondary school teachers. Less than two months later, the government of the Republic created the Ecole Polytechnique d’Haiti, a