Worldwide Conspiracy Against Black
Culture and Education

Ibrahima Seck

page 3 of 5

Children grow up speaking their own native languages, usually two or even more. All knowledge of the surrounding world and basic education are transmitted to them in those languages. When time comes to go to school, our children are introduced to a totally different language and to a new culture. In ³Les Fondements d¹un Etat Federal d¹Afrique Noire,² Cheikh Anta Diop expresses well how troublesome and time consuming it is to master science in a foreign language. For example, to enable an African child to understand the meaning of the mathematical concept of ³line,² he has to sit in a classroom for years in order to master his alphabet and enough vocabulary and grammar.

As a secondary school teacher, dealing mainly with students in the last grade, I understand that, for the majority of the students, education in a colonial school is just a waste of time, because most of them can hardly write correct sentences in French. For African children, as for African American children, the discontinuity between the home-culture and school learning ultimately disrupts the learning process for many children and the resulting failure leads them to reject learning itself (see Freeman, p. 12). The situation for these children is even worse if we consider the fact that very few skills are taught to them except in a very limited number of specialized schools. Even those who graduate at the university find out that their training most of the time is inappropriate for the market. This has resulted in social unrest, especially with the effects of the structural adjustment imposed by the IMF and the World Bank.

3. The impact of the structural adjustments imposed by the IMF and the World Bank Since the early 1980's, drastic cuts have been imposed on most of the African countries by the IMF and the World Bank. Public health and education have been particularly affected, since they do not represent an immediate source of income that allows African countries to reimburse the debt. For the department of education, this has resulted in the diminution of the building of classrooms and while few teachers could be recruited, the number of students has increased at the very high speed. To illustrate this problem, I will consider the case of Lycée Blaise Diagné, the biggest high school in Senegal, a West African country where education is free.