Worldwide Conspiracy Against Black Culture and Education

Ibrahima Seck

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1. The two-speed-society created by the colonial school.

In nowadays Senegal, although the constitution states the right of every citizen to get education, about 70% of the children have no access to school. The lack of classrooms and teachers is the main explanation of this situation. Among the 30% who have access to school, a very small percentage make it to the secondary schools. Those who reach the university are just the tip of the iceberg. So, many people are condemned to illiteracy and can never expect to get decently paid jobs in the administration. Most of these people know very little about their rights, since the constitution and the laws are written in French, the official language in schools and administration.

On the other side of the street, we have the elite consisting of people educated in French who run the country. This elite often looks down upon the majority of the population and often prefers a western style of life. Western knowledge has also been imposed on the population whose own traditional knowledge was considered as retarded and scorned. No wonder that some say that the first enemy of Africa is its own elite.

Interestingly enough, the most talented Africans are those who are considered to be illiterate even though some of them know how to read and write in Arabic. The most successful businessmen in West Africa are from this very group but they are very small in number. If only our educational policy did not exclude the majority of our population, we might have more successful businessmen and workers with a higher level of productivity. As stated in Kassie Freeman's paper, “to keep groups uneducated or undereducated has been a formula across societies for the underutilization of their talent”.

2. Problems related to the language used in education and the content of the school curriculum.

William H. Watkins's paper clearly describes the impact of colonial rule on education in Africa. Since the entire indigenous social structure was made to serve the colonial relationship, all indigenous institutions of a victim country, especially schools, are retarded and deformed. The culture of indigenous people is either destroyed or significantly damaged. Language is the vehicle by which all the genius and the history of a people are transmitted. Since indigenous groups were forced into by artificially drawn national boundaries, the language of the ruling country was used as the base of the colonial school. In Senegal, French was used as the language of instruction despite of the fact that Abbe Boilat, an educational leader in Senegal in the nineteenth century, wanted people to be educated in their own language for more efficiency. However, the authorities in Paris knew that the exploitation of the country depended on the cultural subordination of their subjects. And the best way to achieve that goal was to impose the French language.