Colonial Bilingual Heritage and Post-Colonial Myths in Cameroon's School System

Abstract

This article examines Cameroon's bilingual heritage and describes post-colonial attitudes and tendencies towards language and language use in the country's educational system. The intent is to show that Cameroon's bilingual heritage - a colonial legacy - has led to an unnecessary and chaotic national competition among languages and is reflected in educational institutions by the failure of the French-English 'bilingual' tandem. Thus, the study traces and shows that an uncritical support of the existing school bilingualism, a aspect of the general political objective of national unity and integration, hinges on a fictitious collective post-colonial dream about using the bilingual heritage of French and English, and the cultures that lie behind them, to impose cohesion and harmony in an intrinsically heterogeneous linguistic and cultural community.


(The Journal of Cultural Studies: 2001 3(1): 56-73)