Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0030/00307.txt

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$Unique_ID{bob00307}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Cote d'Ivoire
Chapter 7A.   Education and Intellectual Expression}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{T.D. Roberts, Donald M. Bouton, Irving Kaplan, Barbara Lent, Charles Townsend, Neda A. Walpole}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{education
french
school
schools
system
ivory
coast
africans
child
government
see
tables
}
$Date{1973}
$Log{See Table 1.*0030701.tab
}
Title:       Cote d'Ivoire
Book:        Area Handbook for Ivory Coast
Author:      T.D. Roberts, Donald M. Bouton, Irving Kaplan, Barbara Lent, Charles Townsend, Neda A. Walpole
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1973

Chapter 7A.   Education and Intellectual Expression

     The Ivory Coast child received his education in 1962 through two
separate, often conflicting, systems: the traditional system centered in the
family and tribe and the modern system centered in the school. All children,
even in the most Westernized families, receive some instruction in the
traditions and customs of their forefathers. In rural areas this instruction
follows a traditional formal pattern, whereas in urban areas it tends to be
informal instruction by the parents.

     The modern school system, an almost exact copy of the French system, was
developed during the colonial period as an instrument for the assimilation of
Africans to French culture. For several decades, however, there has been
serious question whether the system is suited to the requirements of the
country and its people. Rigid insistence on standards designed for the
developed French society, while giving those who pass through the school
system an excellent education, severely limits the number who can meet the
requirements. Most African children are not exposed to the French language and
to ideas which the French child has absorbed since infancy until they start
school. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Ivory Coast child has
difficulty reaching standards set for the French child and that the dropout
rate in schools is extremely high.

     Those who succeed in passing through the system become in effect "Black
Frenchmen" removed from the rest of the population, whose culture and heritage
they discard in favor of the highly esteemed French culture. In many
instances, however, the education and acculturation is only superficial;
knowledge is acquired but not understood or absorbed; and the person is left
in midair questioning and doubting the familiar and unable to grasp the new.

     Despite these shortcomings, the government and a major segment of the
population are determined to maintain the school system on a par with that of
France. They feel strongly that only by copying exactly the education of the
advanced European can they themselves reach the same stage of development.
Some Africanization of curricula and textbooks has taken place and continues
to be implemented, but it has been restricted largely to substituting African
for European examples to illustrate lessons and to introducing the study of
African history, geography and culture into the curriculum. The basic
curriculum remains that prescribed by the French ministry for education as the
preparation for French qualifying examinations.

     Although education in the Ivory Coast is excellent in quality, it is
still extremely limited in quantity. Despite a 30 percent increase in school
attendance during the 1950s, estimates indicate that in 1962, 80 percent or
more of the population was illiterate. Only some 40 percent of the school-age
population attended school. The rate of attendance varied greatly in different
areas of the country, ranging from about 80 percent in Abidjan to less than 20
percent in the extreme north. Attendance at primary school is compulsory if
facilities are available. Of the total children in school, about 95 percent
were in primary school. The number of students in secondary school increased
ninefold between 1950 and 1960, but still comprises only about 2 percent of
the group between ages 15 and 19 (see table 1 and fig. 8).

[See Table 1.: Number of Schools and Students in the Ivory Coast, December
1960]

     Until World War II the education of girls was almost entirely neglected.
Although a Catholic school for girls was opened as early as 1898, traditional
customs and prejudices permitted very few girls to attend school. Since the
late 1930s, first the French Government and later the Ivory Coast Government
have made a concentrated effort to expand the education of women on the
grounds that the wife and mother is the prime instigator of change in a
society. Even though special curricula were adopted to attract girls and give
them the most useful kind of education, in 1962 less than one-fourth of the
student body in the country consisted of girls, and only 15 women were
pursuing higher studies.

     The dearth of educational facilities has long been a point of
dissatisfaction on the part of the populace. Parents are anxious to send their
children to school in order that they may attain the economic advantages which
an education offers. They are aware that the economic and social status of the
European is the result of his education and want their children to have the
same opportunities. However, once the child is enrolled in school, the
illiterate parents show little interest in the kind of education he is getting
since they are usually unable to understand the subject matter or judge its
merits. Parent-teacher associations exist mostly in urban areas, where the
parents, usually having gone to school themselves, take a more active interest
in their children's education. The value attributed to an education by both
parents and students is often much higher than the actual value of the
qualifications achieved. This overestimating has led to both disillusionment
and unemployment because young people refuse to accept work which they
consider inappropriate for their educational status.

     Despite the clamor for more education even at the risk of quality, the
government has remained determined to avoid giving a little knowledge to a
mass of people who will then become dissatisfied with their lot but will not
have sufficient qualifications to be readily absorbed by the economy. The
government intends to expand the school system at a rate dictated by the
expansion of the economy so that the schools will produce only as many trained
workers as the economy will need and can absorb. In a message to the National
Assembly in 1961, Houphouet-Boigny declared that every child leaving school
must either find employment or be directed into an apprenticeship program for
further training. In a similar message in 1962 he stated that school
construction would have to be retarded in some instances in order to provide
funds for expanding production, but that expanded production would not only
provide the revenue for more and better schools later but would also provide
jobs for graduates from these schools.

Traditional Education

     As in all societies, the Ivory Coast child is from a very early age
instilled with the traditions and mores of his society. Because the continuity
of family and community is given great importance, this education is
considered indispensable. Learning through observation begins in infancy. The
child is constantly in contact with the adult world, being carried around on
his mother's back while she performs her tasks in the home, the field or the
market place. By the time he is 5 or 6 he begins to perform certain tasks
himself and is given such responsibilities as watching goats and chickens in
the yard, gathering kindling wood or supervising younger children. Most of the
games played by children are imitations of adult activity and train the child
in the patterns of behavior that govern relationships between individuals.

     From about age 8 on, boys and girls are usually grouped into age-groups,
each having its own internal organization, and assigned tasks prescribed by
the requirements of the community (see ch. 5, Family). The age-groups serve as
a training ground for the full participation in community life. Members are
instilled with a group consciousness, submerging their individuality into a
larger whole, and are taught about their responsibilities toward the
community. The division of labor within the age-group follows that in adult
life, the boys performing economically useful tasks such as farming, building
or herding, and the girls tending to their needs for food, clothing and
shelter.

     Apart from their participation in the age-groups, the children continue
to receive individual training from their parents in the occupations which
they will follow as adults. Some are apprenticed to craftsmen to learn a
trade, while others just become progressively more integrated into the family
economic unit. Moslem boys attend Koranic schools, starting at about the age
of 7, where they are taught to read and interpret the Koran and are initiated
into the practices of their religion (see ch. 8, Religion).

     The climax of the training period is reached at puberty, when the child
undergoes a series of formal initiation ceremonies designed to demonstrate the
boy's or girl's fitness to assume the responsibilities of an adult. The
ceremonies, which are not held by Moslems or Christians, are usually preceded
by a period of formal education of the initiates in a retreat completely cut
off from the outside world. There they undergo tests of strength and endurance
as well as tests in the practical performance of their future duties. The
puberty rites performed at the end of the retreat often involve circumcision
or excision and establish the boy or girl as an adult member of the society.

     The education of the African child into the traditions and ways of his
society continued even after the French introduced a formal school system and
persist in all but the most Westernized families. In rural areas parents are
usually willing to send their children to school only if and when it will not
interfere with the child's traditional education. Absenteeism in order to
participate in age-group activities or to prepare for puberty rites is common.
Although some degree of traditional education may persist in urban areas among
the French-educated Ivory Coasters, it is usually imparted informally by the
parents or some relative and does not follow the formal pattern of age-groups
and initiation.

Development of Formal Education

     Formal education was introduced by the French toward the end of the
nineteenth century to train the interpreters and scribes required by expanding
colonization. The first school was opened at Assinie in 1887 by a young French
teacher, Jean d'Heur, who followed the curriculum of metropolitan schools. At
the same time, some of the missionaries in the area were teaching Africans the
rudiments of reading, writing and the French language to facilitate their
efforts at conversion. In 1893, when the Ivory Coast became a colony, Governor
Binger entrusted the Societe des Missions Africaines de Lyon with the
responsibility for educating the Africans, and five schools were subsequently
opened, four in the southwestern lagoon area where French economic activity
was the greatest and one at the important northern town of Korhogo.

     In keeping with the French idea that education is the responsibility of
the state and that it should be secular, the Colony of the Ivory Coast in 1897
established a public school system which took over from the missions the
responsibility of educating the Africans. The missions were allowed to
continue their schools but were required to follow government-prescribed
curricula and standards in order to be accredited. The public school system
comprised a number of primary schools open to any child between 6 and 15. The
three-year course concentrated on teaching French and elementary mathematics
to future petty administrators, but also included courses in history and
rudimentary science. After the creation of French West Africa (Afrique
Occidentale Francaise-AOF) in 1904, the Ivory Coast school system was
integrated into the expanded centralized system of the federation, which was
based in Dakar.

     The educational system of the AOF was designed to serve two, often
contradictory, purposes: it was to train the farmers, artisans, clerks,
interpreters and teachers who were needed to assist the French in operating
the colony, and at the same time, in keeping with the policy of assimilation,
it was to inculcate the African with French culture. The second purpose tended
to dominate educational policy throughout the colonial period, and the
structure and content of education in the Ivory Coast followed closely that of
metropolitan France. Primary schools (ecoles primares elementaires) were first
organized into village schools, offering a 3-year course of French, reading,
writing and arithmetic, and regional schools, where the best students from the
village schools could complete their studies for the French certificate of
elementary education (certificat d'etudes primaires elementaires-CEPE). After
1924 they were combined into a single type of primary school in an effort to
make the school system correspond with that of France. Curricula in rural
schools were modified, however, to include agricultural training; schools in
urban areas followed the standard French curriculum.

     Superior primary schools (ecoles primaires superieures) offered a 3-year
course following the CEPE, which trained students for junior clerical
positions in government and commerce, and vocational schools offered a 3-year
course which trained skilled craftsmen. The top graduates from the superior
primary schools were recruited for the normal schools, which offered a 3-year
course in either education for the purpose of training teachers or
administration for the purpose of training junior administrators in government
and commerce. Until after World War II, the three types of postprimary schools
granted only locally recognized diplomas. This was highly resented by educated
Africans, who contended that the granting of separate qualifications for
Africans was designed to keep them in subordinate positions and prevent them
from equal opportunities with the French.

     The Lycee Faidherbe in Senegal offered the classical French secondary
education leading to the baccalaureat degree and to admission to a French
university. Although it was open to all students in French West Africa who
could meet its entrance requirements, few, if any, Ivory Coasters ever
attended it. Until after World War II, Ivory Coasters wanting a secondary
education went either to France or, as most did, to the Ecole Normale William
Ponty in Dakar. Founded in 1911, it provided a modified French secondary
education and the practical training which could qualify Africans for the few
responsible positions open to them in teaching, government service and
commerce. In 1918 a School of African Medicine was appended to it to provide a
limited higher education locally and train Africans toward a local degree in
medicine, pharmacy and veterinary science. Because of its consistently high
standards which were recognized by educational institutions in France, William
Ponty was the elite school in French West Africa which educated most of the
present political leaders.

     Changes in colonial policy at the end of World War II and political
reforms granted immediately after the war called for a new approach to the
education of Africans. A conference held in Dakar in 1944 prepared a 20-year
plan for education in the AOF based on the recommendations for postwar reforms
of the Brazzaville Conference held earlier that year (see ch. 2, Historical
Setting). The plan established a dual purpose for the school system: to give
the population at large the basic education necessary for responsible
citizenship in a Westernized society and to prepare the more gifted students
through advanced education to assume the leadership in their communities. The
extension of French citizenship to Africans in 1946 theoretically gave them
equal political rights with their metropolitan fellow-citizens; it was
considered essential, therefore, that they be provided with equal education.
Between 1946 and 1950 the structure and content of education in French West
Africa were reorganized to parallel that of metropolitan France, and the
school system was made a department or "Academy" of the French national school
system under the jurisdiction of the Minister for Education in Paris. The
department was administered by a General Directorate of Education in Dakar. No
differentiation was made between African and French students in any school in
the French Union; Africans were expected to achieve the same high standards as
Frenchmen, and their qualifications were equally respected.

     In addition to revising the approach to education, the 20-year plan
devised in 1944 also called for considerable expansion of educational
facilities at all levels. As a consequence, during the 10 years preceding
independence in 1960, attendance at primary and vocational schools in the
Ivory Coast increased eightfold, and attendance at secondary schools increased
over ninefold. A classical college was opened in Abidjan in 1947 as the first
secondary school in the Ivory Coast which could prepare students for
university study. It was augmented in 1954 by the opening of the lycee of
Abidjan. During the same period the government inaugurated a program of
special scholarships for Africans for advanced study in France and opened a
Center for Higher Education at Dakar which was soon transformed into a full
university. In 1959 a similar Center for Higher Education was opened in
Abidjan under the sponsorship of the University of Paris.

     Starting in about 1957, popular demand and enthusiasm for education,
encouraged by the government expansion program, resulted in an outburst of
spontaneous community action in which many villages built schools and then
applied to the Ministry of Education for teachers.

     The program for expanded education suffered, however, from a chronic
shortage of funds, and the progress achieved, though spectacular in comparison
to the prewar situation, was far from sufficient to provide the manpower
needed to run an independent country. Education held and continues to hold a
secondary place on the list of priorities established by the government for
the utilization of its resources.