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RAMBLE in the JUNGLE · Textbook · Unit 4: Kom: Tradition, Identity and Education

Issue 4.3

Should Schools Put Wider-World Knowledge Ahead of Local Culture?

YESEditorial counterpoint, School Should Open Windows (written for this book)
NOWanaku Verdzekov, Kom Culture and the Circle of Life (2014)

Learning outcomes

After reading this issue, you should be able to:

Summarize the author's criticism of education that is disconnected from community life.
Explain the idea of culturally relevant teaching.
Evaluate the balance between local and global knowledge in a curriculum.
Consider whose culture is represented in a school.
Write a curriculum proposal for a subject you study.

Introduction

If you are new to Kom. The Kom Kingdom is one of many traditional kingdoms (sometimes called fondoms) in the grasslands of north-west Cameroon. It was founded in the 1700s, has around 300,000 to 500,000 people today, and is led by a king called the Fòyn (or Fon), who is both a political and a spiritual leader. Kom tradition traces the people to a founding mother, Nandóŋ. The Kom language is itaŋiKom. Traditional kingdoms like Kom continued to exist under German, British and then Cameroonian rule, and their rulers still hold authority in many areas of daily life, such as land, customs and disputes, alongside the modern state.

Several readings use Kom words. You do not need to learn them, but the vocabulary list and Appendix C explain the most important ones.

Education and culture. Across Africa and elsewhere, colonial-era schools were designed to train clerks, teachers and catechists, and often taught students more about the colonizing country than their own. After independence, some leaders tried to change this. Tanzania's Julius Nyerere, in Education for Self-Reliance (1967), argued that schools should prepare young people for life in their own rural communities. In the 1990s, the American educator Gloria Ladson-Billings described culturally relevant pedagogy: teaching that builds on students' own cultures while also helping them succeed academically and question injustice.

Graduate unemployment is a serious problem in many countries; in Cameroon, young people with degrees often work in informal jobs, such as driving motorbike taxis (known locally as bendskin).

The author, Wanaku Verdzekov, wrote these replies in 2014 on an online forum for Kom people. The "Circle of Life" refers to the rituals, such as funerals, libations and births, that tie a Kom community together across generations.

As you read, ask: What should a school teach that a family cannot, and what should a family teach that a school cannot?

YES

School Should Open Windows

Editorial counterpoint Written for this book, not by Wanaku Verdzekov.

This essay was written for this textbook to present the opposing side fairly. It is not by Wanaku Verdzekov.

Wanaku Verdzekov asks a hard question: what is the point of schools that produce graduates who cannot find work, and who know little about their own community? The author is right that education should connect to real life, and that local knowledge (of plants, crafts, history and custom) is too often ignored. But building school around local culture has costs, and the students who pay them are often the ones with the fewest other chances.

School is a shared ladder

For many young people, school is the only place where they can learn what the wider world expects: the mathematics, science, languages and writing needed for university, trades and jobs in other towns and countries. Families already pass on local culture at home, at ceremonies and in daily life. If school spends much of its time on what children could learn at home, it may give less to those whose families cannot teach them the rest.

Whose tradition?

"Local culture" sounds clear, but most communities contain many cultures. A school in Bamenda or Nairobi may have students from dozens of language groups and several religions. Choosing one tradition to build the curriculum around can leave others out, or make them feel like guests in their own school. The author recognizes this, noting that there are over 200 tribes in the Cameroons, each with its own cultural ecosystem. A curriculum for all of them at once is very hard to design.

Traditions are not always fair

Every tradition carries values that some members challenge. A school that presents a tradition only with pride may teach children not to question it. But one of school's jobs is to teach students to ask questions, including about their own culture's treatment of women, young people, outsiders or people who are different. A school built around tradition may find this harder than a school that studies tradition alongside other ideas.

The world keeps changing

Young people today will work in jobs that do not yet exist, in economies connected across continents. Digital skills, scientific thinking and communication in widely spoken languages open doors that local knowledge alone may not. In another Ramble, the author imagines a grandmother who can do algebra in itaŋiKom; her grandchildren may need to programme a computer too. Schools must prepare students for a future their elders never saw.

Include local culture, but do not centre everything on it

None of this means local culture has no place in school. It can enrich every subject: local plants in biology, local history in history, local crafts in design, local stories in literature. Many educators call this culturally relevant teaching, and it helps students see that their own lives are worth studying. The disagreement is about balance: local culture should be a window into the curriculum, not the walls around it.

Conclusion

The author is right that education without roots can feel empty, and that students should be proud of where they come from. But school must also open windows onto the wider world, especially for students who have no other way to see through them. The best schools do both: they honour the Circle of Life at home and prepare students to join circles far beyond it.

— Editorial counterpoint

Kom Culture and the Circle of Life (2014)

By Wanaku Verdzekov

Humans are wired for stories. Some humans believe, in their hearts, stories that sound true but are actually fiction. Belief and truth can be miles apart. But a human heart can make them neighbours.

TribalMonk

Education and the Kom Circle of Life

Bobe Emma,

While we wait for Bobe George to "throw more light…", I just want to thank you for turning on the light switch again with this statement:

"I remember in 1993, I helped a PhD research student from the US doing translations, and his field of research was traditional herbs and different methods of traditional healing in our Kom land. I marvelled at how much material he had, but at the time I was wondering why an outsider would be wasting his time on such things…"

What is the purpose of schools and education if what is taught and learned does not translate directly into the lives and living conditions of the citizens of a community? Most educational institutions worth their salt do research, and not just so students can earn PhDs. The research has to help solve a real-world problem. If not, what a waste of everyone's time!

It is heartbreaking to see our brothers and sisters who have "graduated" from institutions with various degrees end up (as one forum member wrote) unemployed, underemployed or virtually jobless. Meanwhile, more schools are built, more parents struggle to pay fees for children to attend them, only to graduate and go back to the "bendskin" cycle of joblessness again. Is something wrong with this picture? What is it? Does anyone have any ideas?

I do. But it is better if everyone takes a little time to think about this picture. See in your mind how it plays out (not like a movie): take the example of a close family member and put yourself in their shoes. At that point you can really "feel" the problem, and then you can put it into words better.

Meanwhile, our funerals must go on, a juju must dance, someone has to taal mɨkum, KOMrades have to dig the grave, our God-sent Kom women still have to make the most delicious food, and the ghɨBobes will split a kola nut and pour libations (with mɨluuh fɨfah), calling on our ancestors to behold the ups and downs of all the years since they left. Then a child is born. And the music begins again from the beginning.

Education without incorporating the Kom Circle of Life is meaningless in a Kom context (if you ask me). And we are just warming up.

iBoisɨ
~wv

Debt forgiven? Where did the money go?

If you visit an off-licence beer shop and look at the signs, you might find this: "No credit. For credit, come tomorrow."

Well, our poor developing (or still underdeveloped) countries did not have credit. Then they got credit, used it, and, because they have not paid back the creditors, their debt is being forgiven? The signs in the beer shop should now read: "No debt. For debt, went yesterday." And something new: "Free beer for all!"

But there is still this nagging question: where did the money go? Don't tell me so. The next generation of debtors is on its marks, getting set, ready to go.

If you look closely at these so-called "deals" between nations, there is usually more to them than the public imagines. When money changes hands, it really does. If a debt is not repaid, does the money disappear into a black hole? No. It is somewhere.

So when a lecturer at the Russian Institute of Natural Monopolies, Vladislav Ginko, says, "On the one hand, we get political support of these countries, for instance in the UN. On the other hand, it helps negotiate military cooperation…", one should take note and bring it home to one's own reality: will our local politicians sign, accept or hunt for loans that they know will only be repaid by raising their hands at the UN in support of their creditor?

The tortoise and the giraffe can live in the same neighbourhood, but one cannot necessarily see what the other sees.

So…
iBoisɨ
~wv

If Kom culture has to live

Bobe Nkfum,

Ayongnɨ. Thanks for taking the time (once in a while) to share your informed opinion about KOM issues.

If one does not know the details of one's culture, history and everything possible about one's homeland, that ignorance can lead to a lot of mistakes, mishaps and misjudgements… mis-everything.

I dare say that even at the global level, the conflicts one hears about every day are mostly based on the struggle of one group of people to keep their culture alive and strong and, if possible, to share (impose) it on as many people as possible. That way (since your culture becomes the centre), everyone and everything else revolves around you. Basically, that is what Western culture has done.

But Kom culture does not have to die for Western culture to live. So if Kom culture (and civilization) has to live, what does Kom need to do to make that happen?

Something to think about.
~wv

Without a foundation, no house can stand

There is a real lack of knowledge among many of our people about their own things. It only goes to prove how we have been beating the bush along a path to nowhere. But few will heed the warning to stop, think and look carefully before carrying on with whatever we think "development" is.

Without a foundation, no house can stand. Without a cultural foundation, no civilization can stand the test of time. If our people do not firm up their foundation, more of the soap operas we are seeing will keep on keeping on. The children are watching, waiting for the cultural portfolio with which to build the future.

Question: are the adults doing their part? You tell me.

Look at Botswana

Bits of information about a system of kommunity living, taken out of context, can seem a bit strange to the uninformed. Here is the deal: there are 200+ tribes in the Cameroons, and each has its own cultural ecosystem. Then there is the ecosystem of the Franco-Camerounese "national" public-service culture, which permeates all 200 tribal systems one way or another. Question: under this national ecosystem, how are the tribal ecosystems doing? You tell me.

But before that, take a look at the governing system of the Republic of Botswana. Its legislative branch (those who write and uphold the laws) consists of a House of Chiefs plus a National Assembly. If you ask me, this mix of traditional and Western intelligence creates a hybrid that produces better, more practical and more logical laws, the kind that make common sense common for the average man or woman on the street in each community.

My deli sɨ bo.

— Wanaku Verdzekov

Replies written in an online forum in May 2014; other members' emails are left out. Lightly edited for this book.

Vocabulary

Word or phrase	Meaning in the readings
fictive	invented, not real
research	careful study to find new knowledge
underemployed	working in a job below one's skills
libation	a drink poured out as an offering to the ancestors
vicissitudes	changes of fortune; ups and downs
off-licence	a shop that sells alcohol to take away
creditor	a person or country that lends money
impose	to force something on others
legislative	to do with making laws
hybrid	a mix of two different things
curriculum	what is taught in a school or course
culturally relevant	connected to students' own cultures and lives

Comprehension questions

Literal (find it in the text)

What does the author say humans are "wired for"?
What did the US researcher study in Kom in 1993?
According to the author, what is education without the Kom Circle of Life?
What two bodies make up Botswana's legislature, according to the author?
What does the counterpoint say local culture should be in the curriculum: a window or the walls?

Inferential (read between the lines)

Why does the author think research should do more than help students earn PhDs?
What is the author's point in describing the funeral, the juju, the kola nut and the newborn child?
Why does the counterpoint say school is "a shared ladder"?
Why does the counterpoint ask "Whose tradition?"

Critical (evaluate and respond)

Look at one subject you study. How much of it connects to your own community? Should that change?
Which reading better serves students who come from poor families? Explain carefully.
Design one lesson that teaches a school subject through local culture.

Is there common ground?

Both writers agree that education must connect to real life, that graduate unemployment shows something is wrong, and that local knowledge deserves respect. The counterpoint accepts that local culture should enrich every subject; the author does not reject modern knowledge, only knowledge cut off from community.

They disagree about the centre. The author wants education built around the Kom Circle of Life. The counterpoint wants local culture woven into a curriculum that also prepares students for the wider world, especially students who have no other access to it.

A shared approach might be culturally relevant teaching: a common core of skills (literacy, mathematics, science, languages), taught through local examples, with regular study of the community's history, crafts and traditions, and freedom to question them.

Debate and writing prompt

Debate motion: This house believes that schools should put wider-world knowledge ahead of local culture.

Divide the class into proposition and opposition. Each side must use at least two pieces of evidence from its reading and answer the other side's strongest point.
After the debate, hold a vote, then discuss which arguments changed minds.

Writing task: (400–600 words) Choose a subject you study (for example biology, history or mathematics). Write a proposal to your teacher for one unit that would teach the same skills through local culture. Explain what students would gain and what they might miss.