generationsacrifiées

This year 2018, the World Teachers’ day specially calls for our attention on the Right to Quality Education. In Cameroon, this call coincides with two major issues.

In many regions of our country, it is no more possible for thousands of children to simply enjoy the Right to education. The incapacity of politicians to respond to an evolving crisis with a truly inclusive dialogue has turned our English-Speaking Regions into education deserts for two long years, and progressively into a useless and costly civil war front.

In another frame, here we are in a school resumption in which the contents of the textbooks made available to our children seem to have been elaborated with evident loose attention that invites criticisms, causes scandals and provokes interrogations and disappointment. For years now, the issue of the quality of the school textbooks has been raised in Cameroon in a more and more acute tone, without leading to any adequate answer. The problem of the quality of education in this context takes its full meaning because, undoubtedly for the first time in a long while, it implies the quality of the society in which we are living and shall live in the coming years: a society that is partly illiterate from the war escapees, and partly destroyed by all sorts of deviant behaviors

For all these past years, we have not stopped repeating this:” Education, if not of good quality, can be more dangerous than an absence of education”. On this 05 /10/2018, we should add to this plain truth that there is no true exercise of the right to education when the education itself is not of good quality and when for one reason or the other, education progressively becomes deformation, it is proportionally a violation of the right to education. When such a tool as essential as the school textbook introduces millions of youths to inadequate content which is dangerous for the security, the health and finally the moral and physical survival of the society, it can only be construed as programmed collective suicide, actively or passively put in place. So we clearly state that school textbooks should be above all suspicion because from their design to their consumption through their production and distribution, they should only pass through expert and rigorous professional hands

Yet, the Right to Quality Education is also the Right to a Qualified Teaching Staff. In this electoral year with all our candidates presenting various proposals, it seems important to me to question them on the fate that our country has reserved to education personnel for decades. One third of these personnel (37%), the so called support staff, are treated like slaves: without status, without contracts, without social security coverage, with a salary often below the Lowest Minimum Salary bar. The remaining personnel receive initial training of a questionable quality, and do not benefit from a veritable In-service training plan. The teaching field has become through the years, a vast transit-milieu for more secured and pleasant sectors, or, a grey zone in which all kinds of traffickings are not only authorized but are also well organized. Should we keep on throwing our children into such a hell?

You, Gentlemen, who legitimately aspire to govern this country after October 07^th, 2018, what can the education community in general and teachers in particular expect from you? Should we emphasize here that all teachers’ trade unions in Cameroon came together and elaborated a common vision proposing reforms in education and the document is available since February 2017?

Happy Teachers’ Day 2018!

Roger KAFFO FOKOU, Executive Secretary General of SNAES – Cameroon