Illiteracy among Cmr youth alarming

The rate of illiteracy in Cameroon is becoming unbearable because youths have decided relax the literacy standard of their nation as many refuse to go to school.

The question now is; who is responsible for the high rate of illiteracy in Cameroon? Is it parents or youth? Some youths have chosen the negative path of life by refusing to educate themselves with the help from their parents. They steal, brutalise, rape and galavant on the street irresponsibly. That explains why there is high crime wave in our society today.

Most parents would even prefer to walk naked for their children to go to school but the some children simply do not want follow the right path of life. Like parents would always say; ‘they have decided to give you food in a plate but you want to eat on the ground,’ forgetting the fact that you are the leaders of tomorrow.

Coupled with the introduction of social media, the youth wants to earn fast money, which explains why most of them will want to acquire only their O Level or A Level and make fast money. Also, some youth don’t want to suffer before earning money and they don’t equally have patience to go to school.

Johnson Ikome, a teacher thinks that the Cameroon Economy is responsible for the high illiteracy rate in the country today. Ikome argues that a huge part of State budget is spent on armed forces, causing some civil servants, especially teachers, to go home without an encouraging salary to keep them working in their various localities. Thus, teachers tend to live from “hand to mouth”. He further explained that, both the youths and the Government are to blame.

Youths are not creative in the sense that, they don’t make use of their God-given talents; “Cameroonians sit without using their brains,” because of laziness. Talking about their homes; parents hardly make their children to understand the importance of going to school and becoming great persons in future.

This is because children need to be put on a right path to know what they want in life but all hopes are often left on teachers, forgetting the fact that parents have a huge part to play in the child’s future. Due to this, most children tend to feel that their parents prefer their jobs to them, and as such a child’s thinking is not following the right track. Thus, parents are also responsible for the high illiteracy rate in Cameroon.

Meanwhile, the high birth rate and child abandonment is also a predicament as most parents are not able to care for their children, imbibing in them moral education or sending them to school. Rather, some parents prefer to end their children’s education half way so that they can go in for public examinations and have jobs. In most cases, this leads to frustration as they tend to live undirected lives and often end up as misfits in society when they do not get employment.

Most parents prefer their female children to get married, most often at very young ages; 12 – 14 and to men old enough to be their fathers. Girls’ enrolment at the primary schools is lower than that of boys and the gap widens up to secondary and high schools especially in the Northern Region of Cameroon, which has the highest rate of illiteracy in the country.

Another cause of illiteracy stems the poor working conditions of teachers; one teacher is sometimes required to teach two classes because of lack of staff. A teacher is also forced to teach subjects that he or she has no experience on.

According to statistics, a teacher is to take an average class of 59 students but this is hardly the case, particularly in remote areas where there are more students in a class than the infrastructure can contain.

The deficit in educational infrastructure is also alarming in the country today. The environment is often not conducive for children to learn. In some schools, students use stones for benches. Class rooms are reduced to a few pegs on which is laid anything to serve as a roof and more often, lessons are being interrupted in the rainy season.

Moreover, the absence of a complete cycle in schools, failure at public examination and cost has discouraged parents who lack the means to send their children to continue their studies.

Political instability in the northern part of the country is also another factor that has led to high illiteracy rate in the country as parents tend to hold back their children from school for security reasons; thus, increasing illiteracy rate in Cameroon by the day.