245 A related question has to do with whether greater primary school success will cause
more young people to leave home and join the elite in the urban centres. Will the health and cohesion of the language community be strengthened or weakened by its childrens improved
achievement in the formal education system? Judging from the data gathered in this study Appendices 1-3, PROPELCA alumni who join the elite class continue to support the
customs of the homeland - including use of the language. Support from such an elite with financial and social resources could be of great benefit to the community. If, on the other
hand, successful primary school students do remain in - or return to - the homeland, then the community will gain adult members who both respect their own culture and are able to deal
with the technological and social processes of the wider world. In either case, concerns about the negative impact of greater school success on the language community seem unfounded in
the case of the Bafut, Kom and Nso communities.
6.5. Concluding thoughts on stakeholders, choice and local language maintenance
Two final issues follow on from the above discussion of stakeholders and interests in the primary school classroom. One has to do with how local reconfiguration of European-
based formal education is establishing new norms for such education. A related issue has to do with whether the current use of the mother tongue in schools may be legitimately
interpreted as an act of resistance against the hegemonic ideologies which underpin the English-only education system.
6.5.1. Re-norming European-based education Analysis of the choices of African communities regarding formal education usually
limits those choices to two. The community may respond by attempting to adopt the package of non-local knowledge and values that is European-originated education; or it may reject
that ideological package and remain in a static state which is both economically disadvantageous and socially backward. Pressure towards the former is formidable. Due to its
introduction to Africa by colonial powers, as well as its continued support by powerful national and international agents, education based on the acquisition of non-local generally
European knowledge and values is understood to be the universal, value-free, normal educational package for African young people Hoppers 1994:43. Local attitudes towards
formal education are seen as responding to that universal norm, either in acceptance or rejection.
246 Analysis of local educational and sociopolitical choices often plays to this same
perspective. Local is equated with static, and global is equated with dynamic and progressive. Local cultural realities are described in terms such as tradition and culture
maintenance. Historical analysis of local African response to colonial education also tends towards
a dualistic interpretation: would Africans choose the traditional or the modern, the hoe handle or the white collar cf. Sivonen 1995 options for education? Indeed it is easy to
conceptualise educational choices in Africa, either now or in the past, in terms of a paradigm of acceptance of, or resistance to, the powerfully institutionalised set of knowledge and
values that is European-based formal education. However, the problem inherent in looking at education choices in Africa as consisting of two distinct alternatives is that it frames the
whole question of education in Africa in a way that privileges the normative label that has been allocated to Western education. One chooses the normal or something different.
What is suggested here is an alternative analysis of education choices in local African communities, based on the view that normal European formal education is itself the
product of a particular historical and sociopolitical moment or series of moments throughout European society. The formal education system that came to Northwest Cameroon in the late
19
th
and early 20
th
centuries was itself a product of British history, power, identity and politics. Thus formal education is not and never has been a context-free institution. The
systems and skills that comprised formal education as it was introduced into Northwest Cameroon today were part of the sociocultural history of Britain and the West.
In its turn, the formal education system of Cameroon has been further contextualised by the fact of its implementation in this sociocultural environment. Thus, when local
Cameroonian communities today interact with the formal education system it is this product they are interacting with, not some context-free standard for modern education and skills.
Local attitudes and actions regarding formal education are not merely a matter of progress via alignment with an educational norm or stagnation in refusing that norm; rather, within
the community and the nation, formal education is constantly being framed and re-framed in a larger context of change and interaction.
Of course the nature of formal education today remains politically loaded, as it has been since its earliest introduction to Northwest Cameroon. The shaping of education is still
dominated by the powerful in the interests of their own economic and political concerns Giroux 2001:73. Certain forms of knowledge - and the language in which they are framed -
continue to function in the interests of specific, dominant ideologies. But it is important to
247 understand that everyone with a political stake in educational outcomes, no matter who they
are, is also involved in the dynamic process of shaping education at local and national levels. Both resistance and compliance are evident across the entire range of stakeholders.
In this context the Cameroonian nation and community are engaging in the reconfiguration of European-based formal education, replacing it with norms more consonant
with their own aims and values. Granted, this process is not clearly evident throughout the entire school system. In local communities of Northwest Cameroon, it is limited to the
primary school; secondary and higher education continue to reflect largely non-local values and knowledge, buttressed by the imposing influence of those powerful institutions which
first introduced it and continue to support it.
233
In addition, the primary curriculum remains loaded with facts whose meaning is beyond a 12-year-olds ability to grasp - particularly
when taught in a second language. Classrooms continue to feature significant amounts of arcane knowledge, and rural grade one students still intone incomprehensible British folk-
nursery rhymes.
234
The national curriculum also tends to reflect the knowledge and values most relevant to urban centres, but less helpful to the rural communitys children.
Nevertheless this study shows that in Cameroon the European-based curriculum so long sponsored by non-Cameroonian interests is being unpacked at local as well as national levels.
This reconfiguration of formal education to fit national realities is evident in the current Law on Education 1998. The first revision of national education policy since
independence, this law was formulated based on the input of the National Forum on Education convened in May 1995 Ministry of National Education 1995. Those at the forum
urged changes to the earlier education policy including: a curriculum adapted to the social, cultural and linguistic environment of the learner; the need to develop a national culture as
well as inculcate a scientific and technological culture p.11; and the need to inculcate moral and civic values within the school system p.12. These priorities were built into the
new laws top objectives of education in Cameroon. The revised national education policy represented the decision to replace the curriculum expectations inherited from the British
colonial government with a Cameroonian national formulation of appropriate curriculum.
233
At national level, these institutions include national government, denominational authorities, and private commercial interests. Internationally, institutions such as multilateral donor agencies and commercial entities
maintain a significant interest in the development of education which prioritises global knowledge and values.
234
Heard in class 1, PS Manji, Bafut, 25 Feb 03: Poo-see-ca, poo-see-ca, whe ha you bee? I been to Lan-dan to vee-sit da quee. Etc.
248 In the local communities of Northwest Cameroon a similar process is taking place.
Stakeholders in the community are examining the social and cultural expectations of the national curriculum and replacing some of those that are inapplicable or inappropriate to the
society with others that make sense to the local context, its values and its goals.
235
Examples of the reconfiguring process at local levels include the reinterpretation by local communities
of the purpose of primary school, and its perceived sufficiency as a base of education for community members. The purpose of primary education is as much about character and
general skills-building as it is about academic formation. The fact that primary school leavers may have low fluency in English and literacy is frustrating to parents, but not of the highest
importance. This process of refashioning expectations of primary schooling is described by Giroux
as being the crux of resistance in education. He argues that the school is a social site where human actors are both constrained and mobilised 2001:62, where both domination by the
more powerful ideology and contestation of that domination are found. Giroux contends that the constraints imposed by the dominant culture in school are never complete, nor are they
static. So the process by which local communities in Northwest Cameroon are redefining the purposes and aims of a primary school education represents a low-key, long-term process of
contestation of the norms of European-based formal education as handed down by international and national institutions. The hegemony of normal formal education is not
completely broken, as the ideologies which underpin its power such as the prestige and value of English remain to some extent part of the worldview of community members Giroux
2001:103. However, the process by which parents are questioning the causes of school failure and reinterpreting the uses of school is itself an expression of contestation against the
educational norms formulated by more dominant agents.
236
The fact that this contestation of the curriculum is being done by the local stakeholders themselves is extremely important. Attempts at curriculum adaptation for rural
communities is not a new phenomenon in Cameroon, with the most high profile example
235
Palme 1994, in his study of the school expectations of rural Mozambican communities, referred to this as the cultural retranslation of the school institution 1994:140, emphasis in the original, which in the case he
studied resulted in the school being marginalised from the community altogether.
236
Parents in Northwest Cameroon are not unique in their realisation that the European-based education system is inappropriate for their context. Malekela 1994 describes negative parental attitudes towards primary school
in Tanzania in the early 1990s, noting that low primary school enrolments in 1992 were due to the fact that primary education can no longer give one an opportunity in the modern sector Malekela 1994:125. As it
offered few other desirable outcomes in the areas of moral s or basic skills, it was considered not worth the investment.
249 being the IPAR-sponsored education reform initiative of the early 1970s discussed in chapter
3. Kale and Yembe 1980 make it clear that the lively local opposition to this well- resourced initiative lay not in its programmatic aspects, but in the perception on the part of
local communities including the elite that this innovative new curriculum was decidedly not in the interests of their children. If refashioning of the hegemonic curriculum is to take place
successfully, appropriate new content is not sufficient - those involved must be doing so on their own part and in their own time. The failure of the IPAR reforms might in fact have been
predicted by the failure 50 years earlier to implement the very similar Phelps-Stokes recommendations.
6.5.2. Mother tongue in the primary classroom To what extent is the mother-tongue education offered by the PROPELCA
programme part of the process of contesting the language norms of the national formal education system? Is mother tongue use in schools gaining acceptance because the
community is ready to further modify the language-related norms of education and refashion them to serve local priorities, or because PROPELCA enables students to achieve as dictated
by standardised English-language examinations? Girouxs argument above shows that both these reasons could well play a part in acceptance of mother-tongue education, as the
communities both contest and accept the cultural and linguistic dominance of formal education Giroux 2001:66.
If PROPELCA does in fact represent a site of resistance to the dominant educational ideologies of language and culture, then clearly it is the language committee that is the
primary agent of this resistance. However, to see the language committees of Bafut, Kom and Nso as the leaders of some form of politico-linguistic opposition would be a mistake. Their
aim - expressed over and over in this study - is simply to mobilise the community around promotion of the written mother tongue, although they are highly aware of the cultural and
educational implications of that aim. They are also aware of the communitys respect for the current form of formal education, and the prestige with which English and English-mediated
knowledge are viewed. Indeed, as members of those same language communities, language committee members share that view to some extent.
Therefore the community mobilisation that language committees hope for can only be achieved as they identify themselves in a positive and non-conflictual fashion with the
language community. The language committees are able to accomplish their aim only insofar as they are embedded in and draw their authority from the community. The language
250 committees ethos is thus not characterised by the rhetoric of conflict, but of cooperation and
networking - extending networking relationships even to national-level authorities and institutions if possible. For the language committee, cooperation and not conflict is
overwhelmingly the preferred strategy for mobilisation. In this way collaborators - who wear individual human faces - can be engaged in relationship; the enemy the hegemonic
linguistic and cultural norms of current formal education, on the other hand, has no face and so can be safely opposed.
An additional point to be made here concerns the strength to be found in the homogeneous Bafut, Kom or Nso community. Giroux 2001:66 argues that schools
represent contested terrains . . . but the terrain is heavily weighted in favor of the dominant culture. However, when the terrain is the village primary school in the homeland, where the
locally dominant culture is the indigenous one, the contest may not be so formidable. It is true that the power of the hegemonic norm is significant even in that environment where the
school truly is an island of English language, evident in the perception of the teacher as mediator of the knowledge that counts. There is no doubt of the power of English-medium
formal education today in Northwest Cameroon. But as community members interact with the formal education system given them, it must be remembered, the sociopolitical contest it
represents is carried out on their own ground. The integrity of the homogeneous minority- language community provides an environment in which linguistic and educational norms
could be negotiated and transformed. This environment is the one in which language committees are able to gain support for their goal of promoting use of the written mother
tongue. Interestingly, members of all three language committees expressed their view that the
future is bright for mother-tongue education, even predicting that eventually young people will be able to write their school leaving exams in the mother tongue OI: Meliim 5 January
03. Giroux identifies this sense of optimism as being characteristic of the mentality of resistance:
inherent in a radical notion of resistance is an expressed hope, an element of transcendence, for radical transformation Giroux 2001:108.
In this sense mother-tongue education could be seen as a site of resistance to the current dominance of English over the education system, buoyed by the hope that the written
mother tongue will someday be fully accepted as a means of formal learning.
251
Chapter 7. Conclusion
