C'est Dieu Qui Donne L'Anglais: English Teaching in Cameroon's Bilingual Crisis
This essay examines the chronic dysfunction of English-language education in Cameroon's francophone schools, tracing the phenomenon beyond discipline or resources to a deeper cultural and sociopolitical disregard for English itself. The writer documents the everyday contempt students and families show toward English, the toll this takes on teachers, and the uncomfortable question of whether systemic attitudes—not individual failure—have made language acquisition feel like a matter of divine grace rather than effort.
Have you ever been to a typical Cameroonian secondary school classroom( especially the government institutions)? If you visit one when an Anglais (English to French speakers) lesson is going on, you stand a high chance of being entertained, baffled or upset.
Before I tell you why, be reminded that the genesis of our bilingualism dates back to our complex colonial history. As a result, French and English are compulsory subjects from the primary level and admission into State Universities is impossible without a pass in at least one of these two languages. This alone should make learners take these subjects seriously but do they?
Firstly, one must at least admit that learning another language is usually an arduous task for most people. While some learners find it an interesting and exciting challenge, it can be a rather frustrating one for others. Talking about frustrations; teachers of a second or foreign language can get even more frustrated than their learners (I can already see some teachers giving me a high five for shifting the focus from learners for once).
Over the years, the teacher of English to French learners has been faced with various challenges besides the everyday complaints of large classroom sizes and lack of didactic material. learners of English as a foreign or third language (EFL Learners) in the French subsystem can be a pain in the arse ( pardon me). There are cases where EFL teachers have begged to be transferred because they couldn't cope with the challenge of teaching children who don't only stop at disregarding the subject but go as far as making the teacher miserable.
This is to say that the attitude of the learner is of primary importance to the effectiveness of teaching in the language classroom. However, the psychological state of both the learners and teachers has been tucked away under the usual obvious problems. Unlike with other subjects that are dispensed in the learner's second or first language, the EFL teacher, like the Spanish and German teachers, has the extra challenge of having to teach a new language in that language. The learner's attitude, therefore, is of great importance.
The lethargic attitude of the aforementioned set of learners, therefore, does not facilitate the teaching-learning process in any way. This is not to say that there aren't students who are enthusiastic and eager to learn English; some of the best students in English surprisingly are EFL learners. However, it is the problematic majority we are looking at.
Here are some typical utterances that a thrown around regularly in a typical cameroonian EFL classroom to the chagrin of most teachers: "Elle/il dit même quoi", " je ne comprends pas l'anglais", " ont fait quoi avec? "c'est toujours l'anglais la?" , " La dame ci ne peut pas manquer?", "C'est l'heure de Monday Show" and the all time classic "c'est Dieu qui donne l'anglais"! Other learners prefer to stay away or walk out of class. Then we have the kinder ones who do assignments in other subjects or just fall asleep. Is this a question of discipline and classroom control? Not entirely.
And then there is the textbook nightmare. What is a teacher expected to do when only about 20 students in a class of 80 have the required textbooks? It will shock you to know that some learners have all the other required textbooks for other subjects except English. Why? You may be wondering. Because their parents didn't think it was worth buying. Shocked right! Yes! Some students have been known to confess that their parents told them the English textbook wasn't necessary. So you see, this mentality is nursed right from home.
This disdain for the subject is often extended to the teacher or their fellow mates who are good at the subject. You will get comments like "c'est un Bamenda" when one of them answers a question in correct and fluent English. And if the stress of dealing with all of these does not kill a teacher, his nickname just might! Lol! Secondary school EFL teachers have often been baptized with some of the most insanely hilarious nicknames you could imagine. I know one who is referred to by his students as "Voldemort" and another called "Eru". How these names come about, you can never tell and they get to stick so much so that some students end up never knowing a teacher's real name.
We can laugh about this but it is a serious issue considering it's spillover and long-term effects. This "c'est dieu qui donne" attitude of learners which places the comprehension of English on the level of a divine miracle raises so many pertinent questions: Why this disregard for the the language? Are the students to blame? Hasn't our sociopolitical set up encouraged the view of English as irrelevant? Is it possible to change the status quo? And if so, what role do we all have to play?
While we ponder on these questions, it might be important to point out that some teachers do deserve their nicknames: they re-frustrate the already frustrated and alienate the already alienated learners. But that's a topic for another day.
And finally, don't get it wrong. Future EFL teachers, don't be scared. It can equally be a wonderful experience especially if you're prepared and we do have wonderful EFL learners and teachers. There can be more of them if there is a change in mentality. It is deeper than making English a coefficient 5 subject than celebrating Bilingualism Day once year, than creating bilingualism commissions.
This "c'est dieu qui donne" attitude is intricately woven into the sociopolitical and sociocultural web of this country. Our classrooms are just an apt microcosms of this linguistic malaise. I remember laughing at a teacher who said we need to have a "c'est dieu qui donne" 101 course added to the teacher training programme.
Maybe he was right!
Mkong Geraldine
In 2020, Cameroon remained formally bilingual by colonial inheritance, yet the practical devaluation of English in francophone spaces (the majority of the country) was an open secret among educators. The writer speaks from the vantage of someone familiar with secondary classrooms—likely a teacher or educator—observing a normalized crisis that had become the subject of dark humor among the profession.
The piece mattered then as a candid, unsparing diagnosis of why one of the nation's two official languages was being systematically abandoned by learners and tacitly discouraged by families. It reads now as a record of a structural problem—rooted in postcolonial attitudes and reinforced by indifference—that resists both quick fixes and individual heroism. The essay's refusal to blame students alone, while also refusing to excuse them, models a mature institutional critique.