WARNING SIGNALS:
MINISTRY OF HIGHER EDUCATION TO REVISE THE SYLLABUSES OF THE FOLLOWING OFFICIAL EXAMS:HND, Higher Professional Diploma HPD, the French Brevet de Technicien Superieur BTS, and Diplome Superieur d'Etudes Professionnelles DESP.
On Sat, Nov 28, 2015 at 8:37 AM, Ofege Ntemfac ntemfacofege@YAHOO.COM [Cameroon_at50uk] <Cameroon_at50uk@yahoogroups.co.uk> wrote:
WITH VAST NOTES FROM THE DESK OF MR VALENTINE FON TAMEH: SG TACPreaching virtues and Practicing viceThe 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 SpeedIt 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 TechnologyThe 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 assimilationEducation 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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