Students in Bamenda boycott classes due to pressure from Francophone student teachers

Students in many Schools within the Bamenda area have decided to stay away from classes being offered by french speaking student teachers currently studying in the University of Bamenda Teachers Training College. Cameroon Concord’s North West region correspondent gathered that the boycott was provoked by a press release signed by the Interim president of the Union of Parent Teachers Association to parents and students of the schools were the french speaking student teachers were sent. In the communiqué, the interim president noted that the french speaking teachers were officially required to give lectures in English, a language they do not master and can hardly construct a fluent sentence. The statement urged students to stay home or either walk peacefully out of classes when the francophone teachers walked in.

The interim president called the practise of sending teachers from the francophone region to give lectures in English an academic genocide. He further stressed that the teachers can hardly say a word in English and wondered how on earth the administration expected the students to gain knowledge out of this broken language mix? In a radio interview last week, the president of the Cameroon Teachers Trade Union, Mr Tasang Wilfred wondered how the francophone student teachers succeeded in the first place to gain admission into the Higher Teachers Training College of the University of Bamenda when they do not have a mastery of the English language. It is vital to include in this report that lawyers of the North West region also recently protested against the use of the french language in courts within the region.