Abstract
A República de Camarões além de ter sua própria identidade multiétnica, herdou duas identidades do período colonial, a inglesa e a francesa, que se estabeleceram por meio da ensino formal durante a administração britânica e francesa. Após a independência, o país adotou na educação básica12 uma política educacional bilíngüe com dois subsistemas, inglês e francês, respectivamente. No nível superior, a primeira universidade pública era bilíngue, baseada na natureza bi-cultura do país. Este artigo investiga como se dá a implementação das políticas públicas de diversidade cultural desenhadas para o ensino superior. O trabalho examina as bases, práticas e armadilhas na consideração da diversidade cultural no desenho das políticas de ensino superior em Camarões. Argumenta-se, baseado na prática em universidades estatais, que os esforços de introduzir e implementar políticas biculturais inclusivas no ensino superior foram um desastre devido a variedade de demandas exigidas pela diversidade. Utilizando uma abordagem integrada para atrelar questões inter-relacionadas, o artigo concluiu que apesar da vontade de parte do governo em garantir um sistema bilíngüe inclusivo no ensino superior, o que aconteceu foi um exclusivismo, que variou de política para a prática e os resultados.
Highlights
The subject of cultural diversity in education has attracted considerable research interest with varying focal points that form the sustenance of this paper. Meier and Hartell (2009, 180) have argued that increasing cultural diversity in educational institutions necessitates that educationists teach and manage learners with cultures, languages and backgrounds that are unknown to them
Considering demographic inequalities between the two cultures and the fact that at the primary and secondary levels the educational system was fragmented into the English and the French subsystems with
180 Cultural diversity in the Cameroon higher education policy definition: a historical appraisal quite insignificant efforts to ensure the teaching of the different languages in all educational institutions nationwide, the second language generally became a barrier to inclusive learning at the tertiary level
Summary
The subject of cultural diversity in education has attracted considerable research interest with varying focal points that form the sustenance of this paper. Meier and Hartell (2009, 180) have argued that increasing cultural diversity in educational institutions necessitates that educationists teach and manage learners with cultures, languages and backgrounds that are unknown to them. Institutions of learning must help to shape these discourses in order to assist civic leaders and policy makers to work with communities to build civil societies based on principles of social justice, equity and social inclusion (Burridge and Chodkiewicz 2008, 14) Their emphasis is that Professional educators, in particular, need to focus their attention on the roles they play in converting the challenges of ethno-cultural diversity into opportunities for all children and young people. Considering the demographic superiority of French-speaking Cameroon, they formed a majority of the teaching staff in all these institutions of higher learning This became the first educational barrier to enhancing cultural diversity, as students who emerged from the Anglo-Saxon styled pre-tertiary education recorded poor performances and low graduate rates which they blamed on language disparity and began pressing for reform in the higher education system
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