How Cameroon's Eurocentric educational system leads to poverty and unemployment

From the McGill Daily (Canada)

That education does not transfer to success is not due to a lack of willingness of parents to pay fees, of government funding, or of dedication on the part of the students. I am quite certain that education is creating poverty in Kumbo. The culprit is the school system itself.
[...]

The problem is a disconnect between the educational curriculum and the needs of the local economy. In rural Bui Division, the economy is primarily agricultural. There is little need for office workers. Yet the school curriculum looks strikingly like that in Canada, emphasizing English-language proficiency, academic analysis, and hierarchical discipline. Students graduate utterly unable to make something of the resources available to them in their environment, and thus unable to make something of themselves.
[...]

To see this at work, all you need to do is follow the students. Those who graduate from secondary school in Kumbo tend not to stick around very long. They quietly stick up their noses at agriculture and rural trades as they head off in droves for the urban universities. From there, they troll the Internet looking for full scholarships at schools in Europe or North America. The ones who really make it are those who find good enough jobs overseas to stay there.

The path is clear. Every student knows it. It leads directly from Kumbo to the gilded city streets of the West. To the detriment of Cameroonian society, it is walked by some of the best and brightest. But to the great disappointment of the masses of students, it is walked by precious few.

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Comments

[Ngum Anthony]

McGill Daily's "eurocentric" educational system is the result of centuries of human endeavor. The body of knowledge in the system is owes it origin to early Greeks and others in the Midddle East. European nations have made and continue to make enormous contributions to a system we may now call world science and technolgy. Developing countries are right to plug in to what exist instead of building new systems.

The problem in Cameroon and most of the developing world seems to be political inadequacy. We are dealing with political elites that are more in power than in office. Many have no experience in what it takes to create working economies predicated on manufacturing and related services and as well as accountability. High unemployment in Cameroon and elsehere in the developing world is the natural consequence.

The solution is a change of political leadership and not of educational system.

[Youngla]

Thanks for an excellent appraisal of Cameroon's postcolonial education. However, I wish to point out one important factor about the purpose of education as public goods. Bui students are educated also for the larger Cameroon society and the global world. Let the failures of an educational system not blind you to the intrinsic value of education which is self-actualization. What I see is a case in point about the issue of representation,'who has access to understanding and explaining a people and to what use' Cole, 2010.

[DANGO TUMMA]

The author missed the point.
The people of kumbo arent are british southern cameroonians. just as their fellow country men in victoria, buea, tiko or mamfe
etc, the all consumed what the new colonial master, ie FRENCH CAMEROUN, FEEDS THEM. not education, healthcare, transportation, industry, police, military, all that makes a country and society, is confiscated by a french mentality negro, whose goal from France is to impoverish and steal the wealth of southern cameroons as possible. from petroleum to fishes in the sea at victoria , to mahogany in kumba , and kumbo. the people have no right to elect their own leaders as they were used to in 1959, their educational curruculum is structured by french cameroun, who hated these people soo much. and wants to see their culture disappear. they french cameroun military control kumbo and every where in southern cameroons, soo the students have no choice but to learn what ever jargon, the french cameroun authority feeds them. even broken english,Wasnt like these before 1961. infact, PSS, BALI. SASSE COLLEGE. OMBE TACHNICAL COLLEGE ALL WERE GREAT INSTITUTIONS BUILT by southern cameroons government, in colarboration with the missionaries , the graduates from these institutions are masters in their trades worldwide today, but cameroun wont allow them to buildt and develope their land.
WHY? PAUL BIZA, HATRED, JEALOUSY, AND CRMINIAL MIND. FRANCE BEEING HIS SPONSORE.

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