Internally Displaced and Refugee Students in Cameroon: Some Pedagogical Proposals

Abstract

For some six years now, Cameroon has been experiencing unprecedented war disturbances. Since 2014, its three northern regions have been undergoing the hardship of Boko Haram ruthless attacks leading to thousands of internally and externally displaced families and hundreds of schools closed down. The Minawao Refugees Camp near Mokolo with over 60 000 inhabitants, mostly Nigerians, somewhat testifies to the gravity of the situation. A similar Camp is located in Gado-Badzere near Garoua-Boulaï in the East Region, populated by Central African Republic refugees. The Zamay Camp is occupied by internally displaced Cameroonian families of the far North Region. The troubles in the South and North-West which started in 2016 considerably increased the number of internally displaced Cameroonians in the neighbouring French-speaking zones of the West and the Littoral Regions. In the refugee camps or in the invaded zones, class sizes have simply become unmanageable with many of them rising from simple to double or triple. Teachers who were trained to teach around 50 to 100 students per class have suddenly found themselves managing 150 - 200 learners in some classes without any preparation. Among the learners of the same class, some have abandoned school for two to three years. Those learners thus need a special pedagogy. This paper aims to propose some pedagogical solutions to such classes.