Last October we published an article on the practice of the “symbol” as a “means of education” in western countries, a practice that we found in Gabon during one of our shoots.

An internet user has since brought to our attention an article published on the website of Unesco which echoes our blog. This article by Amade Badini, professor of education sciences at the University of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso, reported similar practices still in use in his country.  

Here we provide the first few lines of the article which we recommend you read in its entirety at the following address (in French): http://www.unesco.org/courier/2001_04/fr/education2.htm

“Lord, I don’t want to go their school,
Please, I beg of you, that I don’t (have to) go there again”

This “ Prayer of a small black child”, written in the 1950s by Guadeloupe native Guy Tirolien, unfortunately remains relevant today in sub-saharan Africa where the education system often deals brutally with children as soon as they arrive in class. In Burkina Faso, for example, children are required to shift without any emotional support from their native language to a foreign language, French, which is henceforth considered to be the sole criterion of success.

On the 1^st of October of their seventh year children are forbidden – at least within the confines of school – to make any use of any native language they may have already mastered such as Moore, Fulani, or Dioula… The children are forced to the learn the writing system of a language that is not their own through texts that evoke French villages with their bell towers, and according to programs which explore Paris before Ouagadougou.

As a humiliating punishment – children sometimes have the skull of a donkey hung around their neck with the label “Donkey, speak French!” – an example of the hostile atmosphere the education system can sometimes offer the children. (…)