RANDOM NOTES
WITH VAST INSPIRATION FROM TAC SEC GEN: The Rt. Hon. Valentine Nfon Tameh.
CBAE: From the Francophonie
The decision that French-speaking countries should use this "Approche par les Competences" was adopted in a 1994 summit of "La Francophonie" and so French educationists "went to school" to learn and translate extant literature on Competency Based Approach to Education (CBAE). When Cameroon's opted to join the CBAE wagon around 2006, some 12 years after, official francophone delegations went to Canada and were trained by French-speaking experts. They came back with literature in French, which apparently has been/is being hastily re-translated into English for the Southern Cameroonian community in Cameroon with the negative corollaries attendant upon such hasty, ill-thought out work!
There is nothing stealthy about the motives and mores of the Francophonie. The Francophonie is an overt warfariest agenda. The Francophonie was invented to expand the influence of France and French worldwide. At the expanse of English and Anglo-Saxon values.
In Cameroun, the main agenda of the Francophonie is to francophonize Southern Cameroonians. Listen to this, chutzpah from a francophone minister, a certain Hamadou Moustapha, former Vice -Prime Minister In charge of Housing and Town Planning, in Jeune Afrique Economie, 207, 20 Nov 1995 page 3:
'A un moment donné' effectivement, on a commencé a oublier que les anglophones étaient la, on a eu l' impression que les anglophones s'étaient déja francophonisés"
Or for a spell we almost forgot that the anglophones were here, we had the impression that they had been francophonized. Hannah Arendt's observation that: "The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions, but to destroy the capacity to form any," can be applied here to mean that the agenda of the Francophonie has never been to foster English and Anglo-Saxon values but to efface even the little available.
Festus Okafor in Philosophy of Education (1976) defines the CBAE as a data-based, adaptive, performance-oriented set of integrated processes that facilitate, measure, record and certify within the context of flexible time parameters the demonstration of known, explicitly stated and agreed upon learning outcomes that reflect functioning in life roles. Thus CBAE focuses on outcomes of learning. It addresses what the learners are expected to do, not just what they are expected to know. Okafor goes further to note that the basic concept that propelled the CBAE dates back to the 1920s, when behaviourist and textbook writer Franklin Bobbit in How to Make a Curriculum stated inter alia that "it was incumbent upon the curriculum designer to provide a detailed taxonomy of the full range of human experience so as to construct a curriculum responsive to the needs of students in terms of preparing them for life in the real world". So in as much as the CBAE package per se was first constituted in 1972, its tenets were already being defined and fine-tuned by English behaviourists.
The above mentioned tenets of the CBAE had long become part and parcel of the Southern Cameroonian subsystem of education, thanks especially to the British Inset Programme of the nineteen eighties and early nineteen nineties, with its highly developed penchant for learner-centred activities and mini projects, practical and field work, etc. Therefore, the change as proposed by MINESEC was uncalled for in the Southern Cameroonian subsystem. After all, the British INSET Programme had proven that the CBAE worked well even with the single subjects. The different appellations for the CBAE in the Anglo-Saxon world testify to the fame it has enjoyed therein since it was defined and elaborated in the USA (Oregon) in 1972 in what they called Life Skills Education. The British styled it Standard Based Education, the Canadians preferred it to be called Competency Based Education, the South Africans saw it as Outcome-Based Education, and the Nigerians named it Core Skills Education.
If it is the obsession to adopt the Competency Based Approach to Education (CBAE) as the new national policy, then CBAE could also have been applied within the single subject dispensation and the trainees' terminal profiles defined. Many wonderful educational reform proposals still end up being workable only in the contexts where they are conceived and not in others with different classroom and schooling situations. CBAE, with its focus on learner-centred, communicative and activity-oriented teaching, on the discovery method, on projects, on field and practical work, etc would be wonderfully feasible especially in European/western contexts, with "few learners" in the classrooms and the possibility of one-on-one rapports; but there would be need for extra mobilization and real hard work especially on the part of the teacher for it to succeed in our socio-cultural context, with its oversized/overpopulated classrooms.
Cacophany of Tongues
Nothing can be as ridiculous as recent attempts by the Camerounese state to foist the teaching of home languages in primary and secondary schools under the false pretences of obliterating the colonial legacies of English and French and inventing a national character. At the last count, Cameroon today has 282 listed ethnia groups with each ethnic group having its own language as the outward expression of its history, culture and values. In fact, on the Cameroun turh these days various sub-groups are using cultural, histirical and language variations to claim their independence of fom the motherland. For example, an outcrop of the Nkwen people of the orth West region which migrated and settled up the Bamenda Station would this day have nothing to do with their motherland of Nkwen. Hence with 282 ethnic groups and native languages it is a pure vista of the absurd for the state to attempt to teach 282 different languages and cultures in schools under the fictitious claims of inventing national consciousness and character. Sama vitiates this obtuse and jingoistic thinking when he writes, "It could be argued that the 'underlying causes' as well as the 'proximate causes' of internal conflicts in Cameroon are both 'nurtured' by the absence of a nationalist ideology. In this context of cultural and/or ethnic diversity, the institutionalisation of national culture could be most appropriate for conflict management and/or resolution."[1]
You see,where the European colonial situation called for a halt in the expansion of local national culture in almost every field the francophone concolonial dispensation now attempts to to give fresh impulses to the themes of, the forms thereof of and the tonalities of what it proposes to invent as a new national culture. The question is, which one, or which ones, of the 282 has the government selected to be the symbol of its national culture in addition to the colonial legacies of the Anglophone and the francophone. Added to this are attempts, by the same government, to impose latin, Chinese, German and Spanish to children in schools?
Here and there valiant attempts are sometimes made to reanimate the cultural dynamic and The immediate, palpable and obvious interest of such leaps ahead is nil. Nil because it is quasi impossible to invent a national character and culture in a theatre where a segment of the populace are entoning nationalistic and revolutionary songs of freedom.
A classic statement on national culture is offered by Fanon (1963). He defines national culture as: the whole body of efforts made by a people in the sphere of thought to describe, justify and praise the action through which that people has created itself and keeps itself in existence. A national culture in underdeveloped countries should therefore take its
place at the very heart of the struggle for freedom, which these countries are carrying on (Fanon 1963:233). Fanon further asserts that if culture is the expression of national consciousness, then national consciousness is the most elaborate form of culture. In Africa the problem of national
consciousness and of national culture takes on a special dimension (Fanon 1963:247).
Col 3:4 When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. Christ appears in your life right here, right now: one nanosecond after you believe and confess that Jesus is Lord.
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On Saturday, November 28, 2015 8:37 AM, 'Ofege Ntemfac' via ambasbay <ambasbay@googlegroups.com> wrote:
WITH VAST NOTES FROM THE DESK OF MR VALENTINE FON TAMEH: SG TAC
Preaching virtues and Practicing vice
The current ongoing and relentless colonial assay on education as the bedrock of the Southern Cameroonian ethos itself has a history. On Monday 17, 2012 - three weeks into the 2012 academic year - the Ministry of Secondary Education suddenly announced that a new teaching-learning programme would go operational in Cameroun. Progressively.
The reforms proper were first mentioned in 2011. The then Secretary General in MINESEC, Professor Leke Tambo surfaced at the April 04-06, 2011 GCE BOARD Seminar holding in Saker Baptist College to announce the reforms.
The programme, it was said, intended to gradually transform the country's educational system from its colonial objective-driven, cognitive-focused foundation to the in vogue broad-based skills or competency-oriented system, which system, the authoritie said, was tailored to address the urgent socio-economic needs of Cameroon today.
The then Secretary General appealed that reforms should be made "comprehensively, concretely, collaboratively and continuously."
Professor Leke Tambo's catchphrase was that the GCE Board rise above the shackles of a mere examination-obsessed institution to be totally involved in the education process in Cameroon.
The GCE BOARD was expected to be part and parcel of the conception of educational policy, the development of curriculum and then teaching and learning right down to evaluation.
No problem with that at all, wrote Valentine Tameh, the redoubtable Lech Walesa - National Secretary- of the Teachers Association of Cameroun. Per Tameh, "any institution that does not seek to stride forward in the light of positive change stagnates and gradually gets asphyxiated."
Tameh further expounds that Section 5 of the 1998 Law laying down guidelines for education in Cameroon spells out nine different articles of national policy which themselves underscore the importance of training versatile citizens in cognitive, effective and psycho-motor domains. [1]
The nine articles highlight domains including national and international cultures, universal ethical values, family life, national languages, democratic culture, practice and other concerns, the cultivation of an ethos of work, creativity and related aspects, sports-cum-physical education and artistico-cultural concerns and hygiene and health education.
Furthermore, Section 25 of the Education Law:
The Education provided in school shall take into account scientific and technological advancements and shall be tailored in terms of content and method to national and international economic, scientific, technological, social and cultural trends.
Although the teachers at the Limbe seminar were, at the time, clueless about the intemded reforms – not having been consulted before the elaboration of the reforms – they welcomed the very idea that the GCE BOARD should rise to its full potentials and be the very heart of all education matters concerning Southern Cameroonians. For one thing, the freedom of the GCE BOARD from MINESEC civil servants and bureaucrats and its empowerment to be part of the conception to application and evaluation of education policy is exactly what they had been saying all these years.
The teachers also suggested that the education authorities were preaching virtues and practising vice. "This imposition from top to bottom, which failed woefully to take into consideration the broad-based "collaborative" aspect of the proposal smacked of uncalled hurry that will only end up wrecking rather than presenting a supposed well-meaning proposal in good light," The TAC's National Secretary wrote.
More Haste Less Speed
It soon filtered that the MINESEC reforms were conceived way back in 2007, but the masses and a considerable number of stakeholders were kept in ignorance about them, for reasons that are typically Cameroonian. Such reforms, as suggested by the World Bank, usually come along with a financial package meant to motivate those who make inputs; such was the case, but as was to be expected in a Cameroonian setup, the "experts" charged with managing and coordinating activities decided to personalize national work and secretly and hastily do the paper work themselves, so as to line their pockets.
MINESEC itself was hardly ready for its own reforms: the syllabuses for study had not yet been conceived. New disciplines were being introduced without vital material like textbooks.
Tameh writes, "When this issue was raised, one of the Inspectors of Pedagogy replied: 'Inspector, you should know that textbooks are not more important than the syllabus, which all teachers should know how to exploit." This answer provoked the following riposte: 'Chief, if the teacher can make do with the syllabus as material, what about students the majority of who, even with textbooks, barely manage a marginal pass?...'
Two months after the Limbe seminar, MINESEC published a second book list to suit its new schedule in total insouciance of the cost involved in acquiring the new books. Parents and booksllers who has already acquired books as per the old system had to spend more money. Also, the insertion of texbooks into the national booklist is a very corrupt and corruptible process in which civil servants take bribes and insert any hogwash for the education of hapless children.
Having creamed off the cash, the top generals in MINESEC now fancied that orders dished to the lower ranks downfield would get the reforms implements, just like that. MINESEC even refused to sponsor sensitization seminars in the regions, the devisions and sub-divisions. The minister himself turned the heat on the Secretary general who turned the heat on the National Pedagogic Inspectors who themselves turned the heat on the regional authorities who further turned the heat on their subordinates and so the incompetence and injustice continued rippling downwards. Thus stakeholders in the Divisions and schools were asked to sponsor week-long divisional seminars on Education Reforms out of nothing.
Tameh writes:
"How does Yaoundé imagine that it can order the implantation of a national programme with such far-reaching ramifications without spending a franc? Such madness can obtain only in the Ministry of Secondary Education….When public servants continue to see the fatherland they are called upon to develop as a national cake to be despoiled with kith and kin, then statecraft will remain this "danse macabre" that is the blight of each nation-building effort and the bane of our collective state-hood. God save Cameroon once and for all from perpetual ridicule!"
Science and Technology
The bane of contention with the new system was, however, more serious. Fifty years and more into the so-called unification, the GOC has refused to invest in technical education in the Southern British Cameroonians. This is a deliberate plot to keep the Southern British Cameroons and its citizens under-developed. President Ahidjo (and later Biya) knew very well that John Ngu Foncha, the so-called architect of unification, had a passion for technical education. Knowing fully well that the Cameroon College of Arts, Sciences and Technolgy, CCAST, Bambili was a college of science and technology only in name, Foncha tried and failed to get the GOC to transform CCAST into a full-fledge polytechnic. Instead, the GOC destroyed the Technical school in Ombe and the Ombe Trade Centre, a leading technical college established in 1954.
Subverting Ombe was easy. The government simply transferred approximate francophone teachers and mangers to Ombe. These imposters immediately controverted the curriculum of Ombe to suit their incompetence. At the same time, the government refused to recruit English-speaking lecturers into Ombe.
The few English-speaking lecturers recruited had to submit their degrees obtained from England, USA, Nigeria or other English-speaking country to the Ministry of Education for an equivalent rating by Camerounian bureaucrats, French educational system degrees being taken as the yardstick. The equivalent rating system applies only in respect of Anglo-Saxon degrees and more often than not those degrees are under-rated.
The result was that Ombe now churned out approximate trainees, ill-adapted to the local labour market and ill-equipped to further their education in technical and technological institutions all over the world. For the budding technicians, education practically ended after Ombe.
The GOC never though of higher technical institutions and even when it did places into these professional schools were bought and sold. Take the National Polytechnic in Yaounde, for example, it cursus was designed for the so-called "engineers de conception" or those who dream about engineering and conception whereas Ombe was for hardboiled practical technicians.
While the government created schools to train a labour force in did not need, the same governmet made life impossible for existing Anglo-saxon technical schools like the Kamerun Technical College, Nkwen, the Kom-Baptist Technical School and the Anniversary Technical College, Nkwen. The government up-ed taxes and harassment over administrative documents and procedures on the proprietors of these institutions.
In 1995, John Ngu Foncha hit on a strategy to by-pass the intractable government bottleneck in the deliverance of licenses to private higher education institutions especially those in the technical field. Foncha, and a group of shareholders, created INDECO an Industrial and Educational Company, which company was to own BUST, the Bamenda University of Science and Technology. Pa Foncha died without seeing BUST effective because the GOC refused to recognize the institution.
Harmonization or assimilation
Education authorities claimed that they wanted to get the francophone system to harmonize with the Southern Cameroonian 5+2-year system for secondary and high schools. The authorities also claimed that they were re-working the syllabus. Subjects like Physics, Biology and Chemistry were to be suppressed for a generic discipline called "Science", whose syllabus – it was said * is more than 80% Biology. Maths, like in the francophone system, was to be given full prominence, and Literature, which many have continued to erroneously see as "reading stories" - despite its mind-sharpening and productive potentials - phased out. Literature was now to be treated as a mere tool in the acquisition of languages – so English rises to an incidence of six periods per week. The new system also plotted to include new disciplines include Ancient (dead) Languages, National Cultures, National Languages and Citizenship Education.
The new programme also envisioned the mainstreaming of prospective secondary and technical learners for two years of observation, after which they would be orientated towards their appropriate lines of study. TAC said this was a misapplication of a 1995 Forum of Education proposal which called for an integrated or harmonized programme that should take into consideration both general and technical subjects.
MINESEC was accused of ignoring proposals the education system incorporated basic or startup disciplines in technical education like basic technology, reinforced mathematics, health and environmental sciences, to name but a few.
A vivid account of the economic strangulation and ruination of the Southern British Cameroons is given in Jacques. Benjamin, Les Camerounais Occidentaux.
[1] (See 'New Education Reforms: Another test of Anglophone Solidarity' as published on Ambasbay – Southern Cameroonian e-group)
TO BE CONTD.
Col 3:4 When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. Christ appears in your life right here, right now: one nanosecond after you believe and confess that Jesus is Lord.
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