One minute he wants to work in a bank. The next to play with David Beckham in the LA Galaxy soccer team. Or become a head coach.

"People in America should know about me," the starry-eyed 15-year-old says.

A waft of raw sewage through the Port-au-Prince tent camp where he's lived since last year's earthquake brings him back to earth.

"I don't like this place," he says sadly.

Things were already bad for Haiti's four million children before the January 12, 2010 earthquake. Haiti was the poorest country in the Americas, and less than half of children attended class.

So when the quake destroyed or damaged 4,000 schools and drove more than a million people, including Pierre-Noel and his family, into squalid tent camps, the blow was crippling.

Haiti's children are "reeling," says the United Nations Children's Fund.

Actually, in the hellish context, Pierre-Noel is lucky.

True, his camp has no electricity. Water is trucked in. Dozens have fallen sick with cholera and all that stands between the inhabitants and criminals roaming the densely packed tents are teams of bored-looking UN peacekeepers flown in from the other side of the planet.

But Pierre-Noel is lucky: he goes to school.

"You can't build a life without going to school," the soft-spoken boy says.

The state has largely abdicated responsibility over education in Haiti and more than 80 percent of schools are privately run.

These are brightly painted places with optimistic names like Arc en Ciel (Rainbow), Ecole Paradis, or the improbable "Ecole Mixte des Philosophes" (Philosophers Co-ed School) on a banana-tree fringed road outside the capital.

The reality, say critics, is that with private primary teachers sometimes earning as little as 50 dollars a month, many of those schools are hardly better than nothing at all.

"It's a miserable life for teachers, with a derisory salary and unacceptable work conditions," said Josue Merilien, with the teacher's union. "It's a social crime."

Yet desperate parents will take what they can.

"There are many examples of people paying, say, 100 dollars a semester and that can mean the whole family sacrifices a meal a day. They sacrifice hugely," said Deborah Barry, at the charity Save the Children.

"You've got a generation with no school or very reduced schooling (and) everyone's in a mad rush to do something about it," she said. "Even being literate can save their lives, being able to read a medicine bottle, being able to read bank statements."

The twist, though, is that educated and uneducated children alike face poverty as adults.

Diriel Jean, 27, knows the situation well: his job is to travel around Haiti with a megaphone advertising a professional college. The college teaches everything from plumbing to computing for monthly payments ranging between about 12 dollars and 50 dollars, plus entry fees of 100 to 150 dollars.

"It's not that expensive but not many people come," he said, his face pouring sweat after he'd stood for half an hour outside a provincial tent camp without attracting a single prospective student. "People still haven't got enough."

His own pay, he said, was 40 dollars a month.

Of course, in Pierre-Noel's tent camp the children find ways to stay happy.

They play soccer in bare feet. They fly kites created from sticks and garbage bags. They transform plastic bottles into realistic-looking toy cars.

But Emmanuel Bellevue, 26, shook his head as he sat watching the games.

"I'm always wondering what will become of my daughter," he said. "In 10 years what will become of a child who's now 10 and doesn't go to school? What's happening in Haiti means the country can never stop its collapse."

And dreamy Pierre-Noel?

He was busy thinking up new futures. "One of those stewards helping on airplanes," he said. "I'm going to be a steward and see the whole world."

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