When technical education is the only option left

Rev Father Peter Foleng, SD.

Here is an open letter to all teachers, parents, guardians or prospective technocrats and engineers in Anglophone Cameroon, about some pertinent issues and points out the flaws and possible solutions in our educational system. The letter is in reaction to the last edition of L’Effort camerounais, which carried a special focus on technical education and its role in Cameroon.

Introduction
For a number of years, we have noticed that the entire English speaking part of the Republic of Cameroon is not very interested in technical education. Many "Cameroonians have continued to make the mistake of thinking that a civilised person is one who runs around with a tie and a suit.
This is surely a clear case of ignorance. The developed nations of the world today are those who engaged in technological advancement. We will like to mention that we are not against general education as such.
The issue at stake is that we have laid so much emphasis on general education and we have saturated the society with graduates from these disciplines while technocrats are almost not readily available in our Country. We will like the pendulum to swing to the wing of technical education for the, purpose of balance.
We cannot condemn general education because we will definitely use historical facts and literary styles to communicate this beatification of technical education. Let us look at the development of the world after the Second World War.

The Developed Nations of the World
Shortly before the Second  World War America was following a policy of isolation. This was to give her time to build her nation after the devastation of the First World War.
Unfortunately for America; this policy could not last long as the a1ready infuriated Japanese could not tolerate this form of neutrality. They forced America into the war by attacking their naval base at Pearl Harbour. America reacted by throwing two bombs in two Japanese towns, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
When the war finally came to an end America returned to her policy of Isolation. Japan and Germany, who emerged vanquish  and who were so much hit by the war had, to Withdraw to their own nations to concentrate on the nation building. The reconstruction of Germany went so fast that historians have come to baptise it the "German Economic miracle."
On the other hand, the central European nations and Great Britain who were the victors dived to Africa to look for colonies. Today, the results are glaring; the, world is ruled by Japan, America and Germany who all invested in industrialisation and technological advancement. Britain and France who invested on imperialism can only hang on their so called, Francophonie and Common-Wealth of nations.
Towards the close of the last century, the handing over of Hong Kong to China signalled the triumph of technology over imperialism, we cannot think of any household, industry and even  high way today without a Japanese tool or equipment. Technology is ruling the world.

The Development of Technical  Education in West Cameroon
The sad story of Cameroon's technical education began with the departure of Germany after the First World War. During the 30-year German colonial rule there were many industrial activities going on; some relics are still visible today.
Today, a Cameroonian can easily show proof of German presence in Cameroon as colonial masters. We are thinking here of the Prime Minister's Lodge and Bismarck's fountain in Buea with the four-face clock, we are thinking of the Bamenda fort, up station in which is the Government Primary school and Governor's office.
We are thinking  of the defunct railway network in the CDC plantations. We cannot count the bridges constructed by the Germans. Britain and France replaced Germany after the war, as trustee masters, with their own policies. While Britain was interested in local rule, France treated her colonies as French provinces with her notorious policy of assimilation.
Britain had to train local people who will  eventually take up the administration. She was, thus, not interested in setting up any industries in a remote land they were soon to hand over, France, on the other hand, was more interested in exploiting the available resources to set up industries back home in France.
Today, France will prefer to create hundreds of jobs yearly for foreigners from French overseas territories in order to make them stay in France than to open up the industries in these colonies to encourage industrial activities there. This leaves the colonies, Cameroon included, with basically no industries to absolve trainees from local technical schools.
Since independence, the few factories and industries in the English speaking part of Cameroon were long destroyed in favour of those in the French Territory. We are thinking here of the power plant at Yoke, the Timber industry in Etam 1, the Bota wharf and you can name the rest.
The lone state owned technical school in Ombe was dismantled to French Speaking Cameroon. The school Was, to say  the least, abandoned until about two years ago when there was a struggle  to re-establish it. All this hindered  the development of technical education in West Cameroon. When the French Speaking dominated Cameroon government finally decided to embark on technical education, they designed schools that will turn our artisans and semi skilled technicians who should go immediately into the rural areas to work.
This explains why they dotted a few SAR/SMs around the country. These long outlived their usefulness as better qualified people came in from neighbouring Nigeria to fill the local market. This necessitated the need for technical schools to be opened.
Today, the Cameroon market is filled with, technicians from Nigerian polytechnics. Since Britain was more interested in eventually handing over power to the local administrators, their missionaries, who came in to replace the German Sacred Heart Missionaries in the early 1920s and other Missionaries, opened only schools of general education to train their administrators.
We are thinking here of SASSE College, Queen of the Rosary College Okoyong, Mamfe, CPC Bali and Saker Baptist College Victoria.  All attempts to run Technical schools failed surely because of the cost involved. It cost 4 billion to build and equip a Technical .secondary school and double this amount for the Technical high. Both the technical schools, opened by the State and those by the Churches could not continue.
The Government created a Cameroon College of Arts, Science and Technology (CCAST) in Bambili,"' but the Technology department has never started till today. The Technical department in. St. Augustine's college Kumbo died in the Seventies, St. Paul's Technical College Bonjongo, St. John's Technical College Nchang and Christ the King Technical College Tiko, all in the Catholic Diocese of Buea are now all only Commercial/grammar schools.
This is a clear sign that  technical schools are difficult and expensive to run. If the government can step up the budget allocated for government technical schools and the subvention for confessional and lay private technical schools, there may be a difference.

The Colonisation of English-speaking Cameroon
Cameroonians of English expression are well known, the world over, for their adherence to their tradition. For them their tradition is life. It beats my imagination how these same people can afford to relegate their tradition in the field of education to second place in preference to the tradition of our French-speaking brothers.
Our Post primary schools have been designed to last five years and should end with the Cameroon General Certificate of Education Examinations. The tragedy in this issue is that most of our children in Government technical schools follow instead the Francophone system of a four-year course that ends with the Francophone examination, commonly known by its French acronym, CAP.
This places our own traditional examination, GCE to a disadvantage as very few students go in for it. This calls for inefficiency and the marginalisation of the technical GCE  by the Cameroon GCE board. This is simply because the running of this examination is not lucrative; the board cannot break even given the low numbers.
We may want to blame the GCE Board for a number of things, but we should first of all blame ourselves for not patronising this board. Remember that this prestigious examination board of ours came, not by speeches and resolution of majority but by blood and iron.
Parents, Teachers and Students went to the streets in the early 1990s to fight for this board. Now that we have it we are being guided by he who granted it to kill it by euthanasia. And guess what? Some of those who came out with counter placards to protest against the establishment of the GCE board were among the first to be appointed into the management.
However, we are consoled that, his majesty, the former provincial boss of education, North West, now Principal of CCAST Bambili, then a teacher was among the protestors.  Those English speaking Cameroonians, who are sincere to themselves and have the interest and development of our children and the education system at heart cannot sit down and watch this board slowly being sent to the mortuary.
We can reverse the train of events by a simple decision that does not need a peaceful or violent protest in the street. We simply need to instruct our children, who attend technical schools that they will have to complete their five years and write the GCE. This simple act will yield rapid and favourable results.
In this major decision there are two main actors, the parent and the school head. The school head in the government technical schools have their jobs to protect and the parents have the future of the child to build.
Whatever the case may be, the child should be at the centre and should be the beneficiary. Any school administrator worth the name knows that whatever decision of policy that has to be implemented should be done always for the good of the child. Any school decision that will be to the disfavour of the child should be abandoned immediately and shame the devil.
Can these Anglophone Principals sincerely declare to us that CAP can carry the children into the academic world today? Those who claim that they are protecting their jobs have the right to do so as they also have themselves and families to look after. The question to be asked at this juncture is: "who is threatening their jobs?"
Neither the Head of State nor the Honourable minister of national education has asked that Anglophone must write CAP. Both of them are for a bicultural Cameroon. Who then is the perpetrator of this famous CAP that our Anglophone brothers and sisters in Government technical schools have made their idol?
Permit me give two demonstrations about this issue. We have the experience of two situations in the ongoing June 2001 session of the GCE involving a  principal of a government technical  school and an official of the CGCE board in charge of the CAP, Probatoire and BACC technique. The Board official explained that the BACC has well over 430 subjects with 40 specialties.
In some places there may be just two or three candidates for a specialty. These candidates have to be satisfied, he r explained. Here the interest of the child has to rank first. The second case is that of a principal of a government technical school who shows no interest in the conduct of the GCE in his school.
At the beginning of the June 2001 session, the school clerk came to collect examination questions 30 minutes after the examination had started in all centres. In this same centre they discovered that they did not have some examination questions only an hour into the examination when the children where already seated in the hall. Thank God the catchments centre had these  questions.
Whether we believe it or not, the CAP is designed to attract the Anglophones and to keep them always in second position. The cost is purposefully made low and the examination is purposefully set to be cheap. A careful teacher will discover that this is only promotion examination from form two to form three in a real technical school.
Since an ordinary parent will prefer something cheap and the average student will like to be declared successful in an examination, they will be attracted to CAP. We are those to discover such a plot and puncture it before it is too late.
It may be of interest for you to note that in St. Rita's Catholic Technical, Commercial and Industrial College, Nkambe, we put in our students only for the Cameroon GCE, City & Guilds International, LCCI and IMIS. These are all internationally recognised certificate, especially in the English-speaking world.
Whether we believe it or not, the Queen's language is ruling the world. Go to the Internet and see for yourselves. The smart Francophone has already discovered this and is making use of it. This explains why more and more Francophone are flooding our primary and secondary schools and universities.
While the number of Francophone going in for their examinations, the Anglophones are taking it over. CAP is known only in Francophone Cameroon. Note too that BACC technique of the Francophone is recognised in the University of Buea but that of Anglophones is not recognised. We need to educate our parents and students on these facts.
The poor performance in the Technical GCE is partly due to the fact that most of the children who go in are form four children in government technical schools who are well drilled for CAP only. The technical GCE syllabus, if we must do justice to it needs six years, how can we expect the already handicapped students to cover it in four years and produce good result?.
It is for this reason, that I appeal to my brothers and sisters who are principals in government technical schools to encourage the children to write the GCE rather than the CAP. It may not be an error for some one to Purport that our French-speaking brethren intentionally want their English-speaking brethren to remain behind in this field of technology given that it is very lucrative and the jobs are few.
The National Polytechnic and ENSET Douala can only admit a certain number of Anglophones. All these are situated ill the French-Speaking part of the country. Only we can liberate ourselves from it. You will even notice that the results of the technical GCE are always very bad. This is partly because most of the students  in government technical schools write it in form four as an appendix to their CAP.
CAP may be a four-year course examination but the GCE is either five years or more. The few Anglophones who survive technical education are almost always out-whiting their francophone counterpart in all transparent competitive examinations in the field. You will also notice that the OCAM accounting system used in government schools ends only in Douala, Cameroon and may be Abidjan.
Why let ourselves be colonised in politics, economy and education? We can, at least, liberate ourselves from education without being accused of secessionism. It is a simple and cheap decision to take. Just instruct your child that s/he will write GCE not CAP. Could we then drop this notorious argument of: "It is only through CAP to BACC that you can get a job in Cameroon." Before anything, this is not true! May I ask, does a technician need an employer?
Is a technician not already himself or herself an employer? Must the government employ a technician? When there is a technical thing to be done in a firm or industry, what matters is the technical-know-how not the certificate obtained after the learning. Know too that the learning comes before the certificate. Let us stand up to our own traditional examination, GCE. Forget about less expensive and less difficult CAP. Cheap things are more perishable.

The Mentality of Cameroonian ' Parents/Students to Technical Education
The average Cameroonian parent knows that only the very last grade of students attend technical schools. This explains why results of technical schools are always very poor. Apart from the fact that we do not have enough qualified teachers for technical schools, the few children who come into it are not able to create structures in their minds let alone transferring these on the ground. They are simply weak.
We need to break this vicious cycle by encouraging our parents in the villages to send us the entire "List A" and the "List B" students can go to the GBHS, Sacred, Heart, and SASSE etc. We cannot produce engineers from List B students, properly so called.

National Interest and Concerns
Since 1986 the government of Cameroon has laid special emphasis on technical and vocational training of youth. Barely 2 years after H.E. Paul Biya ascended the supreme magistracy of Cameroon, he made a public statement about technical education.
He said inter alia: "As concerns education more attention will be given to technical education as it is more useful to our socio-economic development efforts." (Cameroon Tribune, July 30, 1986, P. 5).
The government has continued to feel this need especially in the midst of the economic crisis. This has continued to echo in almost all the public messages of the Head of State to the nation, especially to the youths. The most conspicuous of them all is the address to the Young people on the eve of their national day celebration in 1997.
The address was dedicated to  technical and vocational training. He said inter alia: "The Nation in general and the government in particular spare no effort in preparing the Cameroonian Youth to assume their responsibilities of today and those of tomorrow. Bearing this in mind, civic, intellectual and vocational education of the youth has been put at the focus of national concerns.
You know that the mastery of science and technology is indeed one of the main prerequisites for the building of a modem nation assured to us today the developed countries" (Paul Biya. CRTV. 10th February 1997,8.00p.m.)
Addressing the young people on the eve of their national day celebration in the year 2001 he again promised that he will make it possible for the youth in school to get linked up to the internet. Computers will be made available to most of the schools and at least one secondary school in each province will be equipped with a computer laboratory that can have access to the Internet.
This is very timely as the world is changing at an alarming rate such that computers will soon become part and parcel of every household, school firm and industries. We hope this will extend to divisional and why not sub divisional levels. Five years ago some one said: "The world is changing frighteningly rapidly. 25 yeas ago, only 25.000 Computers existed in the whole wide world  today the number has' exceeded 160 millions and flying skywards. In a few years, anybody without computer skills will be like a wild ape in a city supermarket."
This effort by the government is a laudable attempt to fill the gap created since independence. This is a springboard for us principals of technical schools to lead our nation into the prestigious corps of developed nations, attained through science and technology. We have to pose as the architects of this phase of our development.
We have the support of the head of state as we see in these words: "For us to master technology, our engineers have to be able to  manufacture parts and build the factories our country needs. Only then can international scientific and technical cooperation actually become uniiversal." (Paul Biya, Communal Liberalism, Macmillan Publishers, 1987 p. 65)
We are those to pressurise the minister, directors and the rest to put into practice what the head of state has said. He will not come down into the field to implement educational policies. The Head of state is one of those ardent believers in the heterogeneous nature of Cameroon. He will be the very last one to force the French system of education on the Anglophones and vice versa.
He has concretely manifested this in two very vital operations - The creation of a purely  Anglo-Saxon university in Buea, - He had to fight hard for Cameroon to be admitted into the prestigious club of the British Common Wealth of Nations.
Otherwise he would have been very contented with Cameroon being a member of the Francophonie. Recognising our bi-cultural nature he had to fight to enrol the nation into a purely English club. His ideas are summarised in the following words: "Cameroon is a heterogeneous country where we must be ready to compromise.
We, therefore, have to cultivate this cultural amalgamation in which each ethnic group will contribute its best to the building of a national culture. This cultural blending is only possible if everyone is free to devise and develop his own creative Ideas, that is, if everyone is convinced that he, too, has something to offer the others.
This desire to offer what one has stems from the belief in one's equality and dignity." (Ibid" p, 103) At the end of all these, one begins to wonder who these principals, who prefer the French system of examinations for Anglophone children, are serving. They are neither implementing national policies nor are they representing the interest of the children. When they do this they turn and blame the poor head of state.
We, the Anglophones, should and must be proud of our own patrimony and stick to it. It is the best for us as the francophone system is best for them for we all know that each person’s mother is the best cook for him or her.