Ntemfac Ofege,
This is you at your BEST. THANK YOU.
Blessed Be Cameroon
Pa Fru Ndeh
Pa Fru Ndeh
From: 'Ofege Ntemfac' via ambasbay <ambasbay@googlegroups.com>
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Sent: Saturday, June 4, 2016 8:43 AM
Subject: Re: [cameroon_politics] COLONIZATION: All Heads of Departments (HODs ) of the University of Buea (UB) and Bamenda (UBa) said NO to harmonization. The Minister of Higher Education
Factfile: FROM THE DESK OF TAC"S SEC GEN
EDUCATION IN ANGLOPHONE CAMEROON: DIACHRONIC AND SYNCHRONIC PERSPECTIVES
Introduction
One academic year, 2014, just gave way to another, 2015 in the realm of education in Cameroon. The 2014/2015 Academic Year had its fair share of the general systemic problems that inform academic years in the country, as well as its own specific problems, like the end of course examination stampede that cast a slur on the organisation of the 2015 GCE examinations and left in its wake untold damaging psychological effects. Also, every July, with its recall of the Foumban Constitutional Conference that brought together delegations from Southern Cameroon and La Republique du Cameroon from 16/07/1961 to 21/07/1961, compels patriots to pause and ponder over the terrain traversed since that historic event. Therefore, attempt will be made herein random style to examine what today passes for the Anglophone educational heritage, vis-à-vis what used to obtain, and a comment will be thrown here and there about expectations.
Diachronic vistas
The oft-styled Anglo-Saxon culture in the Cameroonian context refers to the residual legacy after the British mandate ended in West Cameroon in 1961. In the wake of the Reunification, the two bi-cultural states of the federation were allowed to oversee their primary education while the Central Government's Ministry of Education took charge of post-primary education. Especially denominational teacher training colleges were opened here and there all over West Cameroon – they were ten in number when government decided to close them in 1975 – to train much needed personnel. In an address entitled "Our Education Policy", given at the Headmasters' Refresher Course in Kumba in 1963, found in the "West Cameroon' Teacher's Journal" (WCTJ), Volume 2, Number 2 of June 1963, the Vice President of the Federal Republic of Cameroon and head of the KNDP Government, H.E. J N Foncha, called for discussions to be held in a "free and frank atmosphere", his government's "method of procedure ... in all its activities". He went on: "We don't only tell you, but we wish to hear from you. We believe by using your long experience, we can make a better design of the future of education to the satisfaction of us all".
As far as West Cameroon's post-primary concerns went, the office of the Director of Education and Cultural Delegate for West Cameroon was created and the appointee became the technical and administrative spokesperson for secondary-cum-technical affairs, while at the same time overseeing, on behalf of the Ministry of Education and Social Welfare, the appointment of personnel to and the functioning of training and denominational institutions. The Government Trade Centre (GTC) Ombe, opened in 1952 thanks to colonial development funds for the development of technical education in Nigeria (West Cameroon being administered from Nigeria was thus scheduled to have a trade centre), was fully operational and producing the cream of technicians that the budding nation needed for survival.
Some highly placed Anglophones have criticised the British for opening mere trade centres instead of full-fledged institutions – simply because they wanted to train petty administrative functionaries. However, the June 1963 edition of the "WCTJ" has an article by S.P. Fohtung titled "Government Trade Centre Ombe", about the beginnings of the centre, about how it was functioning at the time he was writing, about its future, about the wholesome, largely practical selection methods for aspirant and about courses and trades offered therein. After noting that the centre was producing bricklayers, carpenters, joiners, cabinet makers, fitter machinists, painters and decorators, etc, and after listing the plethora of trades being offered or being planned for the immediate future, the writer ended with this hope, which I quote in extenso: "I can say with confidence that Ombe has a future and looks forward to the day when its activities will be such that its name will no longer be GTC, but ... School of Technical Studies. It is our hope to see as a reality the dream of a comprehensive institution embracing a great variety of technical subjects ranging from domestic science to commercial techniques, and dedicated to furthering the development of our young people and of our country".
The teaching programmes in GTC Ombe, as per Fohtung's article (ibid), included basic courses in English, French, Science, Mathematics and Technical Drawing taught throughout training, with History and Geography coming in as staff was available. The trades offered were divided into five major areas: electronics and electricity, automotive, building trades and wood technology, metal technology and manual arts.
The transformation of GTTC Kumba into CCAS unfortunately led to the closure of the Manual Training Centre attached to it, and the only logical direction of the shift because of the training and services offered had to be GTC Ombe, especially as need for them in schools was great. Thus Hon L.M. Ndamukong, Secretary of State for Education and Social Welfare, in a keynote address to the headmasters in Kumba entitled "Education at the Crossroads", found in the same edition of the "WCTJ", talked about the West Cameroon Government having embarked "on a programme of establishing manual handicraft centres", and made a call that children with identified skills should be encouraged to seek admission at the Ombe Trade Centre, and even failing to gain admission, "they should try to become apprenticed to train as carpenters, bricklayers and mechanics ...", an indication that there was already in existence a vibrant professional sector.
The few feeder schools for CCAST Bambili and CCAS Kumba were denominational – especially St Joseph's Sasse and CPC Bali. The Federal Bilingual Grammar School (FBGS), which began at Man O' War Bay Victoria on the 23/09/1963 and would later become BGS Molyko, Buea, was another feeder school and many other secondary schools would soon follow in tow. The official bilingualism, which the young Cameroonian nation had adopted, was a growing reality in these schools, hampered only by lack of personnel.
In the October 1963 edition of the same "WCTJ", A.D. Mengot, in an article titled "An Experiment in Bilingualism" presented what bilingualism implied in the general Cameroonian context and went on to present the model that would be practised in FBGS Man O War Bay. The first intake, Mengot noted, would be 35 learners from West Cameroon and 35 from East Cameroon, to be immersed into a learning tub and taught freely in both languages by tested bilingual teachers. At their graduation, he continued, they would be issued neither the Baccalaureat nor the GCE "but a certificate that would be recognised by universities of the English and French speaking countries ... In other words, the BGS will be adapted to suit the needs of the Cameroon Republic". The reader today, with hindsight, will observe that Mengot ends on an apprehensive, even prophetic note – that the effort at bilingualism was "evidence of Cameroon's adventure into an untried educational arena, but it is to be hoped that it would before long attract not only spectators but active participants.
Nevertheless West Cameroon was moving slowly but surely towards some form of maturity in the realm of education. It was common knowledge that CCAST Bambili and CCAS Kumba had been earmarked from their opening to become university colleges in the mould of the famous University College in Ibadan. And private organisations like SATA HELVETAS of Swiss origin, which started its Cameroon operations in Kumba in 1961 and which had as its main objective to offer technical assistance to developing countries was doing a lot to harness the local Community Development departments in the North West and South West provinces. Thus petty commercial and vocational concerns had sprouted here and there in Anglophone Cameroon.
Therefore, education in West Cameroon was holistic and wholesome. Vice President J N Foncha, in the opening address to the head-teachers assembled in Kumba cited above broached his government's concern for a futuristic type education and went on to talk about the education of the whole man, about education for self-reliance, about education with emphasis on handicrafts and about the improvement of academic standards. In one of his concluding strands, he cautioned teachers to stay exalted by staying devoted to their duty and to sow justice and fair-play in dealings with learners in order to remain on the rostrum. Hear him: "If you resist favouritism, even those who seek it will respect you".
Similarly, the keynote address by the Secretary of State Ndamukong dwelled at length on general considerations in framing educational policy, stressing in foremost position that education necessarily had to be tailored to suit the fabric "of our society and our economy". He cautioned that our education should make learners citizens of the modern world, while at the same time transforming them into efficient operators within the Cameroonian society – farmers, artisans, technicians of all sorts, etc. The Secretary of State went on to emphasise that West Cameroon's education should serve God's purposes, should be geared at breeding bilinguals, and should explore and lay bare opportunities for all, etc. Unfortunately, as time went on, Anglophone Cameroon's educational legacy was devalued unimaginably. The write-up now examines some major crises that Anglophone education has been faced with since the Reunification.
Perennial policy snags
In 1962/1963, a federal attempt at restructuring and harmonising the two primary systems of education flopped; the UNESCO team leading the talks failed to achieve consensus because its proposals were seen as biased. Subsequent attempts at harmonisation, and consequently at balancing the country's education equation – 1966, 1968, 1971, 1973, 1976, 1983, 1988 and 1989 – were again informed by lack of political will and/or bad faith and so they flopped. Equally, the creation of the IPARs – Yaounde's in 1967 and Buea's in 1974 – outfits ostensibly meant to carry out educational research and curriculum development for the Basic sector did not serve any useful purpose because the only syllabuses they produced did not meet with consensus and so were not approved. These effete outfits were finally scrapped in 1989, after having served only as a drain for public funds; their inability to operate and consequent death have kept the nation for long bereaved of bona fide curriculum development institutions.
The rumblings of discontent that teachers of English expression finally harnessed into demands for an examination board had their roots in all these earlier displays of bad faith. Worthy of mention is the 1983 stand-off between the government and the Anglophone students in the lone University of Yaounde, provoked by what the students saw as the pickling with and whittling away of Anglophone educational programmes with insidious designs to transform Anglophone schools into hybrid outfits. The immediate act of provocation was the National Education Minister's attempt to introduce group certificates for the GCE, which he described as "un examen à la carte" The students revolted and spontaneous, unanimous responses resonated to Yaounde from the Anglophone provinces and nationwide, everyone rising to defend what they considered as sacrosanct.
Come the 1991 – 1993 sustained fight for an examination board, which was spear-headed by TAC and a no-nonsense Azong Wara, with a phalanx of teachers and parents in tow. Bamenda, Buea and Yaounde served at once as the thermometers that helped to gauge Anglophone discontent and as battlegrounds where water-cannons lavishly volleyed water to soak, maim and even blind protesters, in vain hope of breaking the will of a people. Then suddenly, freakishly, the government created a Baccalaureat Board as a Christmas gift for persons who had neither asked for an examination board nor knew what to do with one. The protesting teachers, parents and students reacted to this ultimate provocation by putting up billboards in Buea enshrining the premises of the Anglophone GCE Board, while also endorsing TAC's call for a boycott of the 1993 GCE marking exercise; not even the smuggling of scripts to Yaounde under cover of night, nor the then minister's provocative statements about his own children studying in Europe could cow them into submission.
When government finally capitulated, creating the real examination board (not the first fake one minus technical education), markers stormed the different centres to retrieve unimaginably mutilated scripts from pirate markers who had been recruited on whim. The right to organise technical examinations was ceded to the Cameroon GCE Board (CGCEB) by day but before the new institution could organise itself to put in place a viable Anglo-Saxon technical education blue-print that matched Cameroon's reality, the Anglophobic supervisory Ministry of National Education had used subterfuge to seize, take over and continue to organise technical examinations for Anglophone learners. Thus till today Anglophone technical education learners continued to be subjected to Baccalaureat, CAP and Probatoire, relics of the French Colonial examination heritage; even the much-touted CGCEB-organised GCE Technical examinations became mere window dressing to hoodwink observers into believing that something was being done for Anglophone technical education after all. Hopes to have Anglophone examiners adopt and adapt Anglo-Saxon programmes in vogue like the City and Guilds, the RSA, the LCCI and others were thus dashed. The CGCEB had nevertheless come into existence and would begin organising its own examinations in 1994.
Apologists of the system have often said that Anglophones in Cameroon have never shown interest in technical education, reason why they do not feature strongly in the technical work sector. However, note should be taken that the Ombe Trade Centre, which had rather ended up producing top-notch technicians with mettle far surpassing that of the bookish "polytechniciens" from La Metropole as could be evinced by the vibrant economic sector – CDC, Mundoni, PAMOL, West Cameroon Marketing Board (which became Produce Marketing Organisation in 1974 and Produce Marketing Board later), POWERCAM, (whose supply of electricity was not as epileptic as what we have today), etc; in the proliferation of artisans, architects, secretarial workers and many other professionals of commercial, technical and industrial hue; in the plethora of private companies and enterprises – Union Development Company Limited (Ltd), Kilo Brothers Ltd, Direct Suppliers Company Limited Kumba, Nangah Company Ltd, Primus Progressive Upholstery Industry Victoria, Progressive Furniture Commercial Avenue Mankon, Nkweatta Metal and Welding Works Victoria, Tripartite Metal Construction Victoria – the list is endless. Equally note-worthy is the fact that the educational services of GTC Ombe were complimented by many other private technical schools – VOCAST Muyuka, Nacho Builders, FESS Technical College Muyuka, KTC Nkwen, etc, etc.
When the federation was suppressed and the central services in Yaounde took over full control, a systematic adulteration, even corrosion, of the programmes GTC become GTHS Ombe became the order of the day. Thus the practical Anglo-Saxon legacy and spirit that made Ombe tick were replaced in all existing technical schools by francophone programmes that were ill-conceived or badly translated in(to) English, and were unfortunately being taught by francophones whose language was a potpourri of French, Pidgin and English. This explains why Anglophone parents and learners lost all interest in their country's technical education programme that was deliberately crafted as a parody or poor imitation! And even when government decided to bring in French and Canadian technicians to build the eye-catching GTHS facilities and develop francophone technical education in Cameroon, it failed either by commission or omission to equally invite technicians from the Anglo-Saxon world – Britain, USA, Canada, etc to develop a parallel Anglo-Saxon brand for the schools in the then North West and South West provinces/regions! It is unjust that Anglophone technical education is francophone in structure, teaching and evaluation.
Next issue – organisers of the National Forum of Education two years after the creation of the CGCEB had, from all indications, learned from earlier botched campaigns and so eschewed the scheming, supercilious, know-it-all style that had been the generalised trademark of other authorities. They sent out information and gave enough time for a broad-based, bottom-top consultation with administrative and pedagogic stakeholders in all 56 divisions and 10 provinces of the country, thus preparing all social actors for the reforms that came. It could be therefore be understood that at last the irritable Anglophones easily accepted the oft-condemned reduction of the period for primary education from 7 to 6 years, in the hope that the suggestion they brought up in plenary – that the period for secondary education be correspondingly be evened at 5 years and 2 years respectively for first and second cycles in both subsystems – would equally be implemented.
Note should be taken of the fact that Anglophones had been adamant about reducing the primary schooling period to 6 years because they had earlier been cozened to reduce it from 8 to 7 years. They had all along seen this as one sacrifice with weighty negative implications for their cherished educational heritage – like the expensive one they had had to make after the Reunification, when their children had waited from December 1961 till September 1962 to be able to fit into the Francophone academic year framework. Thus they didn't see why they should continue making these sacrifices, when their brothers in the union were clinging tenaciously and religiously to own residual legacy.
The 1998 Law of Orientation, which supposedly governs the business of education in Cameroon, was an offshoot of this forum. Hindsight now reveals that subterfuge again informed the motivations of the organisers, else why does the Probatoire live on long after the Law of Orientation had scrapped it? It is said that a certain Walter Nkomo Commission in 2006 prepared a text of application for the 1998 Law of Orientation. Cameroonians are still waiting for the text to be signed so that the Law of Orientation can go fully operational, so especially that the Probatoire can be scrapped for a genuine synchronisation of the period for secondary school education. The present day state of affairs will be briefly probed at this juncture.
Synchronic bits
These will be examined from the perspective of strengths and weaknesses inherent in the primary, secondary, tertiary and policy or decision-making sectors/levels; then attempt will also be made to give some proposals. Since these are plethoric, they will be presented at random, with little attempt to sort them out.
Strengths
The attempt at bilingual, even multilingual, education is laudable since this accessing of knowledge through international languages is like placing students at "a window on the world". Equally, the creation of many schools in all nooks and crannies of the country has the effect of bringing education closer to the grass-roots. In the same vein, the low cost of registration and tuition in especially the government schools leaves general education within the reach of all. Also, the existence of Teacher Training and Higher Teacher Training Colleges (TTCs and HTTCs) of general and technical hue that train teachers (even if a limited number!) to teach in public and private institutions is a plus. And the existence of pedagogic supervision arms of the ministries and delegations that follow up trained and untrained personnel teaching in the schools ostensibly gilds pedagogic animation. Finally, the secondary and technical brand of education offered in Cameroon goes some length to address the secondary general and technical aspirations of students and needs of the nation, etc etc. We now turn to weaknesses.
Weaknesses
The weaknesses are legion, yet only some – the tip of the iceberg – can be broached. A good entry point is the overloaded syllabus for the basic sector, with kids who abound in our primary schools having to cope with as many as 19 or 20 compartmentalised disciplines and with spurious, hurriedly crafted textbooks getting in and out of the syllabus at short notice (filthy lucre in unimaginable chunks appears to be all it takes to get textbooks on school programmes), to the discomfiture of parents and learners. Equally putting off is the creation of schools everywhere, with unwillingness to put up necessary structures to accommodate these institutions; the total absence of infrastructure in many cases is as serious a problem as the decrepit state of existing school infrastructure in the old institutions. And the generalised poor management of resources and lack of a clear-cut policy on the financial management in educational setups comes to compound matters.
On another score, there is an alarming paucity of qualified teaching staff in all sectors and a parallel existence of unqualified, nonchalant teachers, occasioning mediocrity in many schools. Trainers and trainees who are not English-speaking are recruited and admitted into supposed Anglo-Saxon universities and training schools and the operational language becomes either only French or a sickening hotchpotch. It is common knowledge that Higher Education Minister arm-twists his fawning administrators in the schools of education in the so-called Anglo-Saxon universities to translate entrance examinations into French for Francophone aspirants, while the same favour is not granted Anglophone aspirants for the other state universities.
Another weakness is the fact that many trainees are admitted into the teacher training colleges without English, French or Maths, while little emphasis is placed on teaching practice during the training. This applies same for the half-baked graduates from the universities who gain admission into the Higher Teacher Training colleges, with little ability to express themselves in speech or writing. The fact that graduates from the HTTCs stay at times for more than six months before being posted or that they spend years where they are called upon to serve the nation without a dime of salary is also putting-off and accounts in no small measure for poor syllabus coverage on the one hand and nonchalance and dereliction of duty on the other.
The trivialising of the traditional grammar focus on parsing and grammar analysis in Anglophone classrooms over the years has produced generations of mediocre products who again "bought" their way in and out of training schools, with the help of highly-placed godfathers. Garbage in, garbage out, the saying goes; so these wards of the highly placed graduate from training colleges, displaying alarming inadequacies and epitomising mediocrity, which for example, accounts for the fact that children graduate from the primary school without mastering the alphabet, the sound system and the multiplication tables, or for the appalling results seen in the untold failures in English, Mathematics and French in the 2014 GCE. In English, 79,293 candidates of the 89, 821 who sat for the examination scored 0-25 on 100 while in Mathematics, 80,323 candidates out of 86,724 fell within the same range!
Also, the notion captured in French as "Sequence" which was adopted in 1995 to replace the trimestrial assessment system that obtained then, is a loose arrangement that only makes allowance for time wasting, seen especially in the infamous "rasca-week' phenomenon in especially public schools that takes away at least two weeks of each term before the holiday break, in the blocked periods for tests and in the consequent inadequate syllabus coverage. In 1995, UNESCO suggested this "Sequence" approach because it had judged Cameroon's teaching time/period to be insufficient. When we take all these wasted weeks and add the very long third term holiday, it dawns on us that Cameroon does not put a premium on the education of its youth. A look at say the South African school year might help us see the point being made.
The South African school year lasts four terms. Education authorities there think it is most propitious to use time maximally for classroom teaching (note that all holiday breaks combined add up to only 2 months, 2 weeks at most). Thus classroom teaching is prioritized and teachers given ample time to cover the programmes. The school year there runs something like this: the first term from January to March, followed by a 2 weeks break; the second term runs from March to June, with another near 2 weeks break; the third term from June to September, with again a near 2 weeks break and the final or fourth term runs from September to December, with the longest holiday break of about one month. How do 2 months 2 weeks for all holidays compare with our four and a half months for just third term? South Africa is just one out of many examples.
The unbecoming cosmetic attachment to bilingual education is an important weakness, with parallel Anglophone and Francophone schools operating in same campuses in the name of Government Bilingual Secondary/High Schools having no organised language or pedagogic interaction, unlike the Man O'War Bay experience of yore. There is also the unwillingness to develop a viable Anglo-Saxon technical education system, which reeks of social injustice, just like there is a similar unwillingness to decree a dependable set of statutes for teachers; this makes for lack of motivation, arbitrariness, mediocrity, corruption, influence-peddling and many other ills, the bane of our educational system. Thus we find baby administrators just out from school lording it over their teachers and parents; the justification supervisory authorities give is that appointments are discretional! This, from all indications, is a smokescreen disguising the unparalleled trading of posts that has been and continues to be the vogue in our education Ministries during this last decade. Another obnoxious factor is the influence peddling, this time by politicians who use their clout to litter the landscape with schools without bother about field realities. These swaggering overlords get their kith and kin appointed into offices of responsibility in schools, many of who have nothing to show except the arrogance and spite they inherit from their godfathers. It is really disheartening to learn that a secretary of state in a different ministry arm-twists another in education to appoint a haughty, fraudulent exam-fixing administrator in a training college – despite stiff resistance from competent hierarchical supervisors – giving as excuse the fact that his hands are tied! This is the reality of injustice and influence peddling that continues to breed mediocrity in the education sector in Cameroon, thus sowing grapes of wrath for a bleak future.
On a different score, the PTA is Anglo-Saxon in conception and was conceived as a tripartite liaising parents, teachers (administrators) and students (at least their representatives) in a confab of convivial ilk, with decisions adopted on consensus. Unfortunately, the supervisory ministries of education have transformed them into public corporations, bringing in overbearing SDOs as members. Another incongruity is the putting in place of a shameless inequitable distribution of personnel, which allows urban schools to have a superabundance of apparently privileged teachers while the majority rural schools make do with abject want. Yet another is the fact that even the Higher Teacher Training Colleges trivialise teaching practice and treat it as a kind of "filling in of the blanks" exercise; thus trainees have been heard boasting to stakeholders of practising schools that even if they failed, they would be given pass marks in their institutions. There is therefore no doubt why these training schools have done their spite to downplay the role of the external examiner – the Inspector who is the technical expert from the consumer ministry. Finally, the inexistence of research and/or curriculum development facilities means that there are no structures that can harness the examination and discussion of education-related issues, and that only national forums must be summoned for any such discussion to take place!
What proposals
Suffice it here to rattle a few proposals. Authorities should formulate an educational policy that will enable country to meet challenges of the ultra-technological era. They should equally seek to formulate an educational policy and put in place a system that on the one hand highlights our national values while remaining flexible to positive external values so as to train products who are immersed in their culture while at the same time having potential for the international market. Furthermore, government should put in place a clear-cut policy on national language study that begins from the kindergarten years and gets fine-tuned in later years for those who choose to pursue studies in these languages. Also government should do all it can to put in place a genuine and viable bilingual educational system which is more or less a sort of immersion, like the Man O' War Bay experience cited above.
Authorities should ensure social equity by allowing the French-speaking and the English-speaking subsystems to operate, each in its own right and by developing a viable Anglo-Saxon technical education system, like it did of the francophone system. There is no gain-saying the fact that if Cameroon has in place worthy French-speaking and English-speaking systems, the product of both systems will be of top-notch pedigree, which will go a long way to enhance and give credibility to our much-touted bi-culturalism. To also improve the system, government should formulate professional and vocational education policies that will favour a free-market economy and self-employment and in the same vein, develop educational policies to ensure equal access for all while stimulating the moral and social consciousness in our youth. Authorities should equally adopt a rational policy on posting and transfer of teachers and appoint teachers to posts of responsibility on the basis of seniority, ability, resourcefulness and qualification, etc. In similar vein, the HTTCs should put premium on the practicum by pulling back after their supposed training to allow the external examiners judge the quality of the products, as used to be the case. If these training schools have done good training, this is not too much to ask. And there is no gainsaying the fact that the technical experts of the consumer ministry must be able to judge the quality of the product. Otherwise, graduates from the HTTCs and HTTTCs should be subjected to a selection test after they graduate – to sieve the substance from the chaff.
Government should leave the PTAs to operate as they were wont so that these outfits should continue providing the sterling assistance they once provided. Equally, government should open proper, free-functioning research and curriculum development centre for primary and post-primary education to give the sectors float. Finally, ways should be sought to keep politicians away from the business of education at all costs, to check especially the rampant creation of schools and the irksome meddling of outsiders in school affairs, however this will be done. The damage these overweening politicians have already to education done is near irreparable.
Conclusion
This write-up, which does not have pretentions to exhaustiveness, has attempted in some measure to sustain the thesis that West Cameroon did not get into the 1961 federation as underdogs, but as a people with noble ideals and high aspirations, specifically in the education realm. Its primary, secondary and technical education sectors suffered no inferiority complex at the time of the Reunification, given that the existing institutions of learning were already producing a cream of elite that the state and country needed to boost themselves in every facet. Unfortunately, the Unification and Unitary arrangements instead spelt doom especially for its burgeoning education sector. Constant attempts, many of which were contested, were made by the authorities of the francophone partner polity to adulterate what Anglophone held dear – in the name of harmonisation. Today, many Anglophones of North and South West provenance tend to look back with regret rather than with joy at what was once upon a time considered as reunion with brothers after about 42 or more years of separation. However, as patriots, they continue to pray and hope that someday for sure, sincere exchanges between the two peoples will inform general state policy and all forms of subterfuge will be eradicated.
The National President of the Teachers Association of Cameroon (TAC)
(Tameh Valentine Nfon; 677719090/690104451/664592632; borley.edimo@ymail.com)
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, June 4, 2016 4:51 AM, 'Timothy Mbeseha' via ambasbay <ambasbay@googlegroups.com> wrote:
I thought each of the so called Cameroon State Universities has a separate decree of creation or birth certificate so to say. Where in the decrees creating Buea University, Bamenda University or any of the other state universities does the Minister derive the authority to regulate/harmonizes courses to be taken in all Cameroon state universities?
Mbeseha
On Saturday, June 4, 2016 7:19 AM, 'SAIDOU' via ambasbay <ambasbay@googlegroups.com> wrote:
I remember I once said in an official meeting that Cameroon is practicing a Cameroonian version of the LMD, and I waS TOLD TO SHUT UP.
In the Cameroon tertiary education system we have one nonesense, one abberation, called M1 and M2. Because it is still done in France.
If Cameroon can still maintain what they call ''probatoire'', which has no place in the anglosaxon system, I can understand why our universities think we can issue a diploma called M1, in the BMD system.
Another abberation is to allow students, even today, do a Masters in FOUR YEARS!!!! I have students who registered in M in 2012, today 2016 they have not yet graduated.
What do we want to harmonize in Cameroon? What is harmonization?
- lifting the francophone system up to the anglophone system?? or
- lifting the anglophone system down to the francophone system???
SAIDOU NCHOUAT SOULE
University of Yaounde I,
Yaounde, Cameroon
237 699 91 69 34
237 242 81 91 10
mayouasule@uy1.uninet.cm
University of Yaounde I,
Yaounde, Cameroon
237 699 91 69 34
237 242 81 91 10
mayouasule@uy1.uninet.cm
De : "Ofege Ntemfac ntemfacnchwete@gmail.com [cameroon_politics]" <cameroon_politics@yahoogroups.com>
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Envoyé le : Samedi 4 juin 2016 8h54
Objet : [cameroon_politics] COLONIZATION: All Heads of Departments (HODs ) of the University of Buea (UB) and Bamenda (UBa) said NO to harmonization. The Minister of Higher Education
In a late afternoon move on Friday June, 3rd 2016, all Heads of Departments (HODs ) of the University of Buea (UB) and Bamenda (UBa) said NO to harmonization. The Minister of Higher Education, Prof Jacques Fame Ndongo looked visibly shocked that lecturers from these two universities stood their grounds in Yaoundé and spoke with one voice. They told the Minister who had used the LMD as an excuse to call for harmonization that the Anglophone system remains the best and if there is a need for any harmonization, then the Francophone universities in the country must go the Anglophone way.
God is still saying something.
The Cameroun government has been planning for years to harmonize academic programmes in the Cameroons state universities. Such a move received fierce…
bareta.press
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Posted by: Ofege Ntemfac <ntemfacnchwete@gmail.com>
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