Azore Opio
18 August 2008
opinion
Words cannot describe how grateful the people of the Far North might have felt when they heard the announcement that they had been gifted with a university.
So many times in life we are offered something great, but most of the time we don't even notice it is right in front of us, and then we miss the boat.I was hesitant at first when I heard the announcement. Incredible gift! I can't tell you how much I appreciated the university gift.
But now, I am not too sure if the Far Nordists are not looking into its mouth to see if it is healthy. I will tell you why. The recent university gift was outlandish portrayal of a fanciful gift. It doesn't get any better than that.
Let me begin with Mr. Green's classical remark in Chinua Achebe's "No Longer at Ease": "We have brought him [African] Western education. But what use is it to him?" We may thus argue that the African child is torn at the tenderest age from the bosom of his/her natural habitat and installed in one of those medieval institutions called school.
There, he/she is fed and reared on the great feeding bottle of foreign traditions and customs - speaking, praying, dressing, behaving, walking, spitting and breaking the wind and so on. They are taught that there is only one way of getting to the top of the world - carrying pens and brandishing note books or clipboards and poring into textbooks.
Heartlessly banished to the "school," the African child grows up too confused to know what to do with or how to live his/her live. They grow up convinced that all that is best in the world is European; Western. They are taught that Europe is the most ideal place to be with a temperate climate. The African child is, therefore, marked with an imprint that nothing may efface.
At that tender age, the African child is also taught that his ancestors were primitive savages who lived naked, ate raw roots and raw leaves, worshipped demons and slept in grass-thatched huts. The African child then grows to hate him/herself and all that identifies him/her as black.
He/she has, in their bloodstream, the venom of self-hatred, self-effacement and self-ridicule. They are Europeanised or rather Westernised - marked with an indelible stamp. Land, soil, grass, forests and animals become strange things to them; they see them as things that would harm them from which they are usually prepared to escape speedily.
The African child has, therefore, always been brought up in awe of European values, such that this prefabricated knowledge of the world, rather than himself and his immediate environment, does not easily abdicate before what originally he should have known.
So, a university to an African child is like teats on a bull. It seems then that, the more universities are created in the country, the more they seem to increase unemployment.
I will tell you more, why. Cameroon's school system still emphasises learning by rote rather than critical thinking and practical skills. Despite this sobering fact, the government continues to blindly create universities without regard to the inadequacy of the educational system.
While manufacturing useless graduates, the capacity of skilled-based institutes such as technical schools, nursing institutes, teacher training institutes and others remains woefully inadequate. There is a complete disconnection between the skills taught at the universities and the skills that are in demand by the job market. Thus, many of the graduates settle for odd jobs whose skills they were never taught - the education they receive is mismatched with the demands of qualified labour.
And yet, the state universities continue proudly to churn thousands of unemployable graduates, year in, year out. And the hardest job the graduates have to do afterwards is looking for a job. What seems particularly odd is that it is gradually being proved in Cameroon that walking out a university gate under the weight of a motor board and a flowing gown is no guarantee that one is educated.
Most of the graduates are functionally illiterate, joining the ranks of the millions worldwide who can't fill a birth certificate or write a shopping list.I'll tell you how what is taught at African school generally does not match with market needs. It will come then, as a surprise to no one that huge numbers of university graduates vegetate without employment for long years after graduating.
When colonialists introduced Western education in Africa, they didn't mean to civilise the natives, rather it was to create semi-skilled labour for the colonialists' industries. Thus, they manufactured docile servants - brick layers, common clerks, tax collectors, fierce law enforcement officers. That kind of education excluded agriculture and industry. It did not, and still does not, emphasise the dignity of merit. It instead models a class of people dependent on ready-made jobs divorced from the realities of Africa.
That education which is still rammed down the throats of African children is now inappropriate. It does not rise from any inherent lack of skill or inventiveness. It arises from the brainwashing, dehumanising and belittling effect of Western colonial education; from the shame and the feeling of worthlessness induced in Africans by colonialists and missionaries by painting and constructing images and ideas of an inferior race.
It is irresponsible to continue with the type of education that trains people for white-collar jobs which they cannot find easily; an education that only satisfies artistic and academic ambitions, but does not cater for the requirements of the stomach nor does it fulfil pecuniary aspirations.
Resolving the acute shortage of skilled labour would require a drastic re-orientation of the school curriculum from rote and self-effacement to skilled-based syllabuses to match what is taught with market needs. Education should go beyond the four common skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking - to include thinking! It must appeal to real situations pertaining in our society; how to deal with them - the changing times and the needs of the people.
There is a great need to exorcise the mental phantoms that still linger and find shelter in the minds of Africans, making them feel inferior. We will need to remember that Mwalimu Julius Nyerere was anxious to spread self-awareness through education. Education for African children must be re-worked to define what Africa is; what Africans are; their cultures, traditions and values in order to brainwash Africans back to themselves.
This should be coupled with a major re-allocation of educational resources. Besides promoting corruption and graft, government should stop spending billions on graduates who will either end up back on their mothers' laps or flee to the Diaspora to forage for dirty jobs. There is absolutely no valid excuse to spend billions, particularly on university education to produce graduates with little if any marketable skills.
The market is clearly not calling for tens of thousands of faculty of arts graduates every year. It is desperately clamouring for specialised and skilled technicians capable of competing in today's global workplace.
So, while the government is eager to appease some ethnic groups with token universities, it should bear in mind that Africa in general and Cameroon in particular, each generation presents its own aspirations and outlook of life that principally shape the education to be had. The generation of today has their mark on intellectual aims with the abandonment of the idea that education should serve to train well-balanced, honest citizens who are able to find gainful employment and fend for themselves, rather than graduate as dependents.
Government should replace many of the so-called universities with truly superior technical schools, rather than try to re-educate university graduates after they graduate. If the government doesn't take drastic and honest steps, we shall always have a chattering class of graduates with short memories, who can put a schematic diagram together but cannot replace a light bulb.
We shall continue to graduate youths with the boxed mind mentality with the knowledge they received at the university being like a corpse in a graveyard.
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Is it not His responsibility to that ? "Cameroonians please give me a brake " Paul biya award university as a gift? . You guys have really been reduce to beggars in your own sweat. Where on this God given earth will a president ever do a thing like that? . You guys are making this biya to think that he is a God . really its time Afroamericans comes and take what rightfully belongs to them to them in the mother land of ours . Cuz you guys are making this monsters thinking that you all are nothing but just bunch of shit which they can turn around any time they want . I also want to say shame on to the military of Cameroon . They might think that they are in anyway better but tthey too are just included in fool list . The presideent used them on an unjust crackdown on thier own brothers they just follow like ships . Its a shame to all Africans . I used to think that all these are happening cuz of the what we did to our brothers and sisters we sold during the slave era . Please lets look of away to pray and abolish that calamity on us .
Cameroonian stop using all this colonian Ideas to tear ur selves apart and act as one . Are you guys patriotic cameroon or to Biya ? when in hard times u instered decided to luxurius plane .
When the time comes Biya shall to the public in Big Disgrace .