By Francis Tim Mbom
A renowned Canadian educationist and consultant, Dr. Geraldine Graber, has said a system of education where pupils are taught how to be creative from childhood gives good grounds for a more productive future.
Graber, 68, told the press she would use Horizon International Secondary School, NHISS, in Limbe, where she works as a consultant, as a nursery to impart Western standards of teaching and learning.
She said the current system of learning in Cameroon, where facts are simply churned out for students to memorise and reproduced, was imported to Africa by colonialists who wanted the colonised to have the facts about them without questioning them.
"That is the more reason why today, most Africans know much about the history of Europe without knowing much about the history of their own tribal or African origins," she said.
"Now knowledge is so prolific. Today no teacher knows everything," she added.
Dr. Graber said they would use the NHISS to build an educational base where kids will be taught and made to understand and even criticise what they are taught.
"The students will be responsible for their own learning. Every subject will require critical learning skills. We will ask them to apply their understanding. They will not only be taught for exams' sake,' Graber said.
Without discarding the system of memorising facts, Graber said a good blend of the two could produce astounding results."The best African memory blended with the best Western standards can be outstanding," said Graber.
Graber comes from Canada, a bilingual country. She said she plans to make NHISS a bilingual model in Cameroon.She regretted that the culture of bilingualism in Canada was more superficial than is it real."It is unfortunate that in Canada our products, 'made in Canada' are more bilingual than the people really are," she said.
Graber said NHISS has been tailored to ensure that this deficiency is addressed among the pupils and students they would train.NHISS is a primary school, which has been running for some years now. One of its coordinators, Henry Melo Forchu, said the school would open its secondary section come next academic year.
He said besides government-prescribed arts and science subjects, students will have other options of studies like music, human rights, computer studies and the learning of languages like German and French.
One of the teachers, Blessed Nyayo, said music helps in enhancing abstract thinking, especially in subjects like mathematics.
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