Some of the things they taught us wrong in school
By Hans NGALA
• Cameroon and Canada are the only bilingual nations on earth. FALSE. Switzerland is bilingual (, Romanche Italian, Swiss German, French); Seychelles is bilingual (English and French). Rwanda is also bilingual (Swahili and English); Belgium with Dutch and French; New Zealand (English and Māori) and several other countries.
• Christopher Columbus founded America. FALSE. Columbus NEVER even saw the horizon of continental America much less set foot there.
• Bilingualism means ‘French and English’. FALSE. Our understanding of the word was skewed. ‘Bilingual’ means ‘two languages’. It’s not a synonym for ‘English and French’, the way we use it in Cameroon.
• ‘Alfred, Alfred Saker, he was the first to come to Cameroon…’. That primary school song is also FALSE. The first Baptist missionary to Cameroon was a Black man named Joseph Merrick in 1843. Saker who was white and with the English Baptist Missionary Society only arrived LATER in 1845.
• Another flaw with Cameroonian education was that it failed to develop students’ critical thinking skills. People were not taught to question authority, to think outside of the box and in fact, you were scared of answering an exam if it differed at all from what was in the notes the teacher gave you or the textbook! This resulted in a rigid mindset that still affects many Cameroonians!
• School also made us believe that examinations are the only true test of knowledge. FALSE. Different students have different areas in which they are strong and given that our school system in Cameroon only tests one’s ability to REMEMBER and REGURGITATE verbatim, this is hardly a test of knowledge. Being able to SOLVE PROBLEMS is a far more useful skill than repeating things in the textbook. Being a critical analyst is way more useful than reciting the Multiplication Table.
• Referring to ‘avocado’ as ‘pear’. Pear is a fruit that is green with a white core, but in Cameroon we were taught to refer to avocadoes as ‘pear’ erroneously.
• Thinking that Jerusalem is in Heaven. Before the internet, many people did not know that Jerusalem is a real city on earth. I remember one granny expressing shock and saying she thought it was paradise. And this is partly due to how the Bible was taught. Yes, the Bible does refer to Heaven as the New Jerusalem (Revelations 3:12 and 21:2, 10).
